"Things were very, very quiet," Gackenbach says. Fox News host Chris Wallace reports in his new book, 'Countdown 1945,' that Lewis became 'livid' when he saw 'Enola Gay' painted on the nose cone a day before the mission. The plane circled twice around the mushroom cloud and then turned to head home. It was delivered by the B-29 Enola Gay (on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum), and detonated at an altitude of 1,800 feet over Hiroshima.
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. Then, the radio went dead: that was the signal from the Enola Gay that the bomb had been released. "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. Besides, what time did Hiroshima get bombed On August 6, 1945, at about 8:15am Japanese time, the US aircraft Enola Gay dropped an untested uranium-235 gun-assembly bomb nicknamed 'Little Boy' over. 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. On 6 August 1945 at 8.15am Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber plane called Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 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. 5, 1945, President Truman ordered the secret mission to be executed, and on Aug. After completing his training, he was approached by Col. For his final task he would fly a plane that he'd name the Enola Gay, in honor of his mother. 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. Tibbets, en route to Guam, felt a 2.5g shockwave driven before a kaleidoscopic pillar of smoke and debris. 31,000 feet above, and 10 and a half miles away from them, Paul W. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. local time, poised above Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge, Little Boy dropped. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Enola Gay dropped the bomb 'Little Boy' on Hiroshima. Russell Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the Necessary Evil.