'Enola Gay' navigator to talk at benefit here
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Theodore J. "Dutch" VanKirk knows why Col. Paul Tibbets selected him in 1945 to be navigator on a B-29 Superfortress dubbed the Enola Gay.
Col. Tibbets' mission on Aug. 6 was to drop the first atomic bomb ever used in war on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, an industrial and military center.
"I had flown with Tibbets," Mr. VanKirk said. "He wanted people with him on the airplane that he knew -- and knew how they would react."
Mr. VanKirk, 90, is the last surviving member of Col. Tibbets' crew. He will be a guest of honor and speaker at a fund-raising event Thursday to benefit the Mt. Lebanon War Memorial.
Mr. VanKirk, in a phone interview from his home in Stone Mountain, Ga., said he is a periodic visitor to Pittsburgh. His son, Thomas, lives in Mt. Lebanon and is chairman of the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney.
The elder VanKirk was born in 1921 in Northumberland, a small town about 50 miles north of Harrisburg. He joined the Army Air Forces in October 1941, before the U.S. had entered World War II. After being trained and commissioned as a navigator, he was assigned to a B-17 bomber piloted by Col. Tibbets.
He was part of a crew that flew multiple missions in Europe and Africa. In addition to bombing runs, his plane transported Gen. Mark Clark and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower during the planning for and the launch of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa.
Months before the U.S. military had tested a nuclear weapon, Mr. VanKirk was training with other crew members in a specially adapted B-29 for the mission over Japan.
"While the scientists were still trying to build the bomb, we were trying to get ready to drop it," he said.
Looking back after almost 66 years, Mr. VanKirk described the mission as an easy one.
First Published March 8, 2011 12:00 am
