The last survivor of the aircrafts crew, Theodore Van. 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. The Bockscar plane is preserved at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The Enola Gay is immortalised in history as the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during the Second World War. This didn’t leave enough time to move the complex instrumentation equipment from The Great Artiste to Bockscar, so the two crews traded planes with each other for the historic flight. Consumed by guilt, he attempted suicide by drugs in a hotel in New Orleans, but he survived and was treated in Waco, Texas in a psychiatric hospital for soldiers. Weather considerations caused the fight to be moved from August 11 to August 9. He left the Air Force in 1947 as a major, and worked at an oil company in Houston, Texas where he became a sales manager for a Mobil gasoline station. Normally, Sweeney and his crew piloted an aircraft called The Great Artiste, and this plane provided the instrumentation and observation support for the drop on Hiroshima.įor the second mission to Japan, Sweeny and his crew were chosen to deliver Fat Man while Bock and crew were chosen to provide observation support. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va., bears the same markings that it did in 1945, including the names of the flight crew from the historic mission, stenciled below the copilot’s window.
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Sweeney had used Bockscar for more than 10 training and practice missions (it wasn’t Bock’s airplane after all, just named after him). The Enola Gay, on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F.
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The answer relates to the purposes of the planes for each occasion. Thomas Wilson Ferebee was the Bombardier aboard the Enola Gay. The question relates to why didn’t Captain Frederick Bock fly his own plane (Bockscar) during the second run. Answer (1 of 8): This is such a popular question I have combined my research into one boilerplate answer and post it every time someone asks about the crew. Fewer people are aware that Bockscar (sometimes called Bock’s Car) delivered the second nuclear weapon, Fat Man, to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Colonel Ferebee died in Florida in 2000, at the age of 81. Most people are aware that the bomber Enola Gay delivered the first atomic weapon to Hiroshima.