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Around noon on Saturday of that weekend my dad, uncle and I drove from McLean to Suitland where we (and 4 people from another family) were given a tour through the Garber Facility by an active duty, uniformed, Air Force Major. I asked my uncle to make the tour arrangements knowing he could get past any complications which might arise. I got both of them hooked on my idea, and we arranged a family gathering (at my uncle's in McLean) for a Holiday weekend (Labor Day I think). I bought additional copies of the book and sent one to my dad and another to an uncle who lives just outside of Washington and has lots of connections. He also said that I could arrange for an escorted tour of the facility. (where they keep and restore all the airplanes not on display or on loan). He confirmed that the ariplane was at the Paul Garber facility in Suitland, Md. I called the curator/director of the Air & Space Museum and asked about "things". Being a "Smithsonian Associate" (contributing member) I decided I wanted to see the plane. Roughly 20 years ago I read a book about the airplane, the crew, and the mission - I was fascinated ! The epilog stated that the DOD had given the airplane to the Smithsonian and it was stored in a warehouse in Maryland. The Enola Gay is one of my favorite subjects. The burial will be private.I am a huge airplane buff but not a pilot. He will be buried in Northumberland next to his wife, who died in 1975. 5 in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Interviewing VanKirk for the book, she said, “was like sitting with your father at the kitchen table listening to him tell stories.”Ī funeral service was scheduled for VanKirk on Aug. VanKirk was energetic, very bright and had a terrific sense of humor, Dietz recalled Tuesday. VanKirk’s military career was chronicled in a 2012 book, My True Course, by Suzanne Dietz. “I know he was recognized as a war hero, but we just knew him as a great father,” Tom VanKirk said. Instead, he and his three siblings treasured a wonderful father, who was a great mentor and remained active and “sharp as a tack” until the end of his life. “I didn’t even find out that he was on that mission until I was 10 years old and read some old news clippings in my grandmother’s attic,” Tom VanKirk told the AP in a phone interview Tuesday. Like many World War II veterans, VanKirk didn’t talk much about his service until much later in his life when he spoke to school groups, his son said. He later moved from California to the Atlanta area to be near his daughter. Then he went to school, earned degrees in chemical engineering and signed on with DuPont, where he stayed until he retired in 1985. VanKirk stayed on with the military for a year after the war ended. “But if anyone has one,” he added, “I want to have one more than my enemy.” “I personally think there shouldn’t be any atomic bombs in the world-I’d like to see them all abolished. And atomic weapons don’t settle anything,” he said. “The whole World War II experience shows that wars don’t settle anything. Most of the lives saved were Japanese,” VanKirk said. “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. VanKirk told the AP he thought it was necessary because it shortened the war and eliminated the need for an Allied land invasion that could have cost more lives on both sides. Whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb has been debated endlessly. Six days after the Nagasaki bombing, Japan surrendered. The blast and its aftermath claimed 80,000 lives. Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The blast and its aftereffects killed 140,000 in Hiroshima.
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It seemed a lot longer than 43 seconds,” VanKirk recalled. “I think everybody in the plane concluded it was a dud. They counted-one thousand one, one thousand two-reaching the 43 seconds they’d been told it would take for detonation and heard nothing. They didn’t know whether the bomb would actually work and, if it did, whether its shockwaves would rip their plane to shreds. As the 9,000-pound bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” fell toward the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. The mission went perfectly, VanKirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets’ fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No. He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history.