I greeted him and, for about an hour, we spoke about that mission as though it has occurred yesterday. No one recognized the source of his fame, though there was a sign with his name. The last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew, Van Kirk died on July 27, 2014.ĭutch was nearing 90 when I met him as he sat in a hangar, selling a book titled, 'The 509th Remembered, A History of the 509th Composite Group as told by the Veterans Themselves At A Recent Reunion.' We met at the Greenwood Lake airshow a few years ago. My connection with the Enola Gay was meeting the navigator on that mission, Theodore 'Dutch' Van Kirk. The anniversary garnered some media interest, mostly about the survivors and how the city rebuilt itself from the ashes after the first use of the atomic bomb.īut there was little mention of the crew of the B-29, hastily named the Enola Gay after the mother of the pilot, Col. This past August 6 was the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which hastened the Japanese surrender during World War II.
