"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. 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.
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Enola Gays Last Crew Member Theodore Van Kirk Dies. Signed Photograph Enola Gay Crew, Photo of the Plane. How The Last Surviving Member Of The Enola Gay Justified Dropping The. Gackenbach was part of the 10-man crew that flew on the Necessary Evil. The ground and flight crew of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay at Tinian. 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. 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. 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.
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Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Crew of the Enola Gay, the infamous B-29 plane from which the first atom bomb was dropped. 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. BBC - iWonder - Countdown to Hiroshima: The bomb that changed the world. Lot Detail - Enola Gay Crew Signed Photo With 3 Signatures: Tibbets. : World War Ii Enola Gay Ncolonel Paul W Tibbets (Center) And. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. ENOLA GAY CREW B-9 MULTI SIGNED 8X10 PHOTO PSA DNA AB12733 (D) X5 WWII. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Russell Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the Necessary Evil. His crew members evaluated weather conditions over Hiroshima, and radioed the Enola Gay to proceed with the plan to release the atomic bomb over the city.