After four years of war, there was victory in the air. A phalanx of high-ranking generals waited for the crew on the tarmac. After 1,200 miles of navigating over water, the Enola Gay had dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima only fifteen seconds behind schedule.
“Everything went exactly the way it was supposed to, and we were all in a state of euphoria,” the flight’s navigator, now eighty-six, told World War II. Theodore Van Kirk felt he had just completed the perfect mission. ‘Bomb-Away’: The Enola Gay ’s Navigation Log Sold at AuctionĪs he stepped from the Enola Gay into the Tinian sunshine on August 6, 1945, Capt. WWII Today- February 2008 | HistoryNet Close
