“I personally think there shouldn't be any atomic bombs in the world - I'd like to see them all abolished,” Van Kirk said. The plane’s navigator and last surviving member of the crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died last week at the age of 93.īefore his death, Van Kirk told the Associated Press that while the mission went perfectly, and that he believed the bombing which killed some 140,000 people actually saved lives in the long run, he felt slightly conflicted.

Tibbets, a 30-year-old colonel at the time of the bombing, named the bomber after his mother. Inside the window-covered nose of the plane, you can see where pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee sat during Special Mission No. The plane was further modified to carry the atomic bomb - dubbed “Little Boy” - which was dropped from the front bomb bay onto the heart of Hiroshima during the mission. (Associated Press)At the time of its mission, the Enola Gay was among the most sophisticated, propeller-driven bombers in the sky during the Second World War, according to the Smithsonian. Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted that most Americans were sick. Paul Tibbets named the modified Boeing B-29 bomber used in Special Mission No. In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. Gay, the B-29 bomber that had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.