"We just looked at each other we didn't talk. "Things were very, very quiet," Gackenbach says. The plane circled twice around the mushroom cloud and then turned to head home. He got out of his seat, quickly picked up his camera and took two photographs out the navigator's side window. The first thing Gackenbach saw was a blinding light and then the start of a mushroom cloud. There is no way I can give him so much as an RIP until I hear that. Then, the radio went dead: that was the signal from the Enola Gay that the bomb had been released. crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. "We were not told anything about the cloud, just don't go through it."Īs they made their final approach to Hiroshima, they were flying 30,000 feet over the city. "We were told that once the explosion occurred, we should not look directly at it, that we should not go through the cloud," he says. Gackenbach was part of the 10-man crew that flew on the Necessary Evil. The atomic bomb explosion photographed from 30,000 feet over Hiroshima on Aug. They had different engines, fewer guns and a larger bomb bay. Their planes were reconfigured B-29 Superfortress bombers. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day. The 509th Composite Group, lead by Tibbets, spent months training in Wendover, Utah, before being shipped off to an American air base on the Pacific island of Tinian. Brad Manning, Enola Gay Bombardier Was Quite Cool Man Slept on Way to Drop A-Bomb, Charlotte Observer, 5 August 1990, 1 Sharon Churcher and Bill Lowther, ’I never lost a moment’s sleep after dropping the atom bomb on HiroshimaI saved millions of lives with a single press of a button on the Enola Gay’ On the 50th Anniversary. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. Tibbets said it would be dangerous but if they were successful, it could end the war. Paul Tibbets, who was recruiting officers for a special mission. After completing his training, he was approached by Col. Gackenbach enlisted in the Army Aviation Cadet Program in 1943. Today, the 95-year-old is the only surviving crew member of those three planes. Army Air Corps and a navigator on the mission. Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S. There were three strike planes that flew over Hiroshima that day: the Enola Gay, which carried the bomb, and two observation planes, the Great Artiste and the Necessary Evil. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. The bomb they carried, dubbed Little Boy, was the world. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Which leaves Van Kirk, now 89, as the only living crew member of the enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that set out from Tinian on August 6, 1945. Russell Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the Necessary Evil. The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets.