Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jul 30, 2014 13:31:36 GMT 12
from the Los Angeles Times....
Theodore Van Kirk, last surviving member of Enola Gay crew, dead at 93
By JAMES QUEALLY | 4:00PM PDT - Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima in World War II,
has died. He was 93. — Photo: Associated Press.
THEODORE VAN KIRK, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay flight crew that bombed Hiroshima in the final stages of World War II, died on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. He was 93.
Van Kirk, who went by the nickname “Dutch” and was the crew's navigator, died at the retirement home where he lived in Georgia, according to the report.
When Van Kirk spoke to a Los Angeles Times reporter in April 2010, he was 89 and had just become the final survivor of the famed crew.
“It’s a very lonely feeling,” he said.
The Enola Gay dropped the first atomic payload in U.S. history over Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945.
The bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, left 80,000 people dead in the initial explosion, and thousands more died from radiation poisoning. A second bombing in Nagasaki killed at least 60,000 people three days later, prompting the Japanese surrender and effectively ending the war.
www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-enola-gay-van-kirk-dead-20140729-story.html
