![]() ![]() (See also Atomic Mission from the October 2010 issue of Air Force Magazine. Van Kirk always supported the atomic bombings for avoiding an invasion of Japan that could have killed hundreds of thousands of allied troops and Japanese. A campaign led by Air Force Magazine forced the Smithsonian to cancel that exhibit, and the bomber became a popular attraction at Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The Enola Gay was snarled in controversy in 1994 when the Smithsonian Institution planned to use it in a display that would have depicted the Japanese as victims. Three days later, another B-29 from the 509th dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Theodore Jerome 'Dutch' Van Kirk (Febru July 28, 2014) was a navigator in the United States Army Air Forces, best known as the navigator of the Enola Gay when it dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.Upon the death of fellow crewman Morris Jeppson on March 30, 2010, Van Kirk became the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew. Flying from an airfield on the captured Japanese Island of Tinian, the crew dropped the 9,000-pound weapon, called “Little Boy,” over Hiroshima early on Aug. ![]() Paul Tibbets, who commanded the 509th Composite Bomb Group, which was formed to conduct the atomic bomb missions. Van Kirk, known as “Dutch,” was the navigator in the Enola Gay crew, led by Col. Theodore Van Kirk died July 28 at a nursing home in Stone Mountain, Ga. The last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, to accelerate the end of World War II, has died.
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