Navigators in his day relied on visual recognition during the day and stars at night to find their way. He said he couldn’t rely on instruments to navigate the route to Hiroshima. He drew a few laughs from his audience when he told them aircrews sometimes used barrels dropped into the Gulf of Mexico for target practice. Tom Ferebee - were unprepared for the critical top secret mission they faced compared to the degree of training aircrews receive today. Van Kirk, he and the rest of the Enola Gay’s 12-man crew - including commanding officer and pilot Col. He then secretly deployed to Wendover, Utah to help train 15 bombing crews with special B-29s to drop atom bombs.Īccording to Mr. In that short time he had already successfully served on 58 combat missions in the European theater flying B-17s. He had little more than four years experience flying combat missions as a navigator in the U.S. Van Kirk was on Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean in 1945 preparing to navigate the Enola Gay over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima towards Hiroshima. Now a resident of Stone Mountain, Ga., Mr. (Ret.) Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk visited the squadron in April. Members of the 700th Airlift Squadron got a unique opportunity to hear a first hand account of what it was like to be the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 “Superfortress” that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, when Maj.
