Japan surrendered six days after the Nagasaki bombing.Ĭapt Lewis died of a heart attack at his home in Virginia in 1983 aged 65. The bombing raid was followed up three days later with second on the industrial city of Nagasaki, inflicting similar devastating damage. It was the actual sight that we saw that caused the crew to feel they were part of Buck Rodgers 25th century warriors.' 'Everyone on the ship is actually dumbstruck even though we had expected something fierce. 'If I live a hundred years, I'll never quite get these few minutes out of my mind. 'Just how many Japs did we kill?.groping for words to explain this or I might say my God, what have we done? 'I am certain the entire crew felt this experience was more than any one human had ever thought possible. 'The city was 50 per cent covered with smoke and a large column of white cloud which in less than three minutes reached 30,000 feet and then went at least 50,000 feet. Captain Lewis said it made 'the greatest explosion man has ever witnessed' We were all dumbfounded.A replica of the atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy. "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. Gackenbach was part of the 10-man crew that flew on the Necessary Evil. 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. Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S. 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. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Russell Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the Necessary Evil.