Enola gay crew still alive

Bierman, the Jewish son of a clothing retailer from Passaic, knew something was up, although he couldn't —or wouldn't — say what. When he died Monday at age 93, Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk was the last of the Enola Gay crew, a team that flew one morning to a city named Hiroshima on a mission that would hurl the world into.

Enola Gay, flown by Captain George Marquardt's Crew B, was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura, the primary target. Twelve American crew members were on that flight. The Enola Gay carried the weapon, nicknamed "Little Boy." It weighed nearly 10, pounds and could produce an explosive force equal to an estimated 15, to 20, tons of TNT.

The Enola Gay was named after the mother of pilot Paul Tibbets. As the mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, Lewis scribbled into his flight log the words that still haunt 75 years later:. The countdown had begun for Capt. His parents were partners in the clothing business, and the family lived a comfortable middle class life on Idaho Street in Passaic.

On August 6, , the B bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. He was young: just five years before, he'd graduated from Passaic High School, a member of the History and Drama clubs. In the cockpit of the Enola Gay and serving as co-pilot was Lewis, only 26, a Ridgefield Park native who only a few years before had led his high school football team to the state championship.

Robert A. Lewis, Sgt. Melvin H. Bierman and the 67 other Americans who would soon be taking off on a mission to Hiroshima that only a few of them fully understood. He was the youngest of three children born to Mel and Carol Bierman — Anne being the oldest, followed by Louis.

So in the final hours before take-off, Army brass told the men to write their final letters home and give them to the chaplain — just in case they didn't come back. ATLANTA – The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of World War II and forcing the world into the atomic age, has died in Georgia.

ATLANTA (AP) — The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of World War II and forcing the world into the atomic age, has died in the southern state of Georgia. Like many veterans, Bierman didn't talk much about the war, but was proud of his role in it.

He had been the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew since when Morris Jeppson, the assistant weaponeer, died. Bierman, 23, was a tail gunner aboard the Necessary Evil, one of two support planes that accompanied the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb that morning.

The son also keeps his father's uniform and the Air Medal he received for the A-bomb missions in a glass case. Mel Bierman came home to Passaic to the family business, selling clothes — and became quite successful, opening Stage III shops in Passaic and Upper Montclair, and later buying Ginsburg's, a high-end ladies' store downtown on Main Avenue.

He produced some of the first images of the mushroom cloud, pictures that Bierman's son, Mitchell, has hanging in his home in Randolph, with a handwritten note from his father. Bierman, who served as a tail-gunner aboard on both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions, was one of the crew members charged with taking pictures after the explosions.

Mel, who died in at age 91, put together a page memoir that Mitchell now has. It may be the greatest single factor to make the Japs surrender unconditionally. Like the other 67 Americans who participated in the Hiroshima mission, Lewis and Bierman are long gone.

[27] Enola Gay reported clear skies over Kokura, [28] but by the time Bockscar arrived, the city was obscured by smoke from fires from the conventional bombing of Yahata by Bs the day before. Years of top-secret planning, laboratory heroics and daredevil test flights over desert in unproven B bomber planes had come down to this in the early-morning hours of Aug.

Soon, it would be no secret what the United States had been up to since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Mitchell was born in , 17 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The plan was set, and now there was no turning back. The war effectively ended five days after the bombing of Nagasaki, when Japan surrendered.