Flying from an airfield on the captured Japanese Island of Tinian, the crew dropped the 9,000-pound weapon, called “Little Boy,” over Hiroshima early on Aug. Paul Tibbets, who commanded the 509th Composite Bomb Group, which was formed to conduct the atomic bomb missions. Van Kirk, known as “Dutch,” was the navigator in the Enola Gay crew, led by Col. Theodore Van Kirk died July 28 at a nursing home in Stone Mountain, Ga. The last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, to accelerate the end of World War II, has died.
