It just gave Japan the excuse to get out of the war and save face.” “The (dropping of the) atomic bombs did not win the war. “The Japanese were a licked people before we ever dropped the atomic bombs,” Van Kirk said. He went without regrets, but knowing his controversial place in history, he explicitly asked to be buried without a headstone. Tibbets, who lived in Columbus, died in 2007. Of the Enola Gay’s 12 crewmen, Van Kirk is the last survivor. “People ask, ‘Does that maneuver have a name?’” he said. He also recalled the exceptionally sharp turn Tibbets had made to get their B-29 as far from the blast as possible.
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“It reminded you of a pot of boiling oil,” he said. Tibbets - Van Kirk recalled being able to see nothing but blackness. Looking down out of the Enola Gay - named for the mother of the plane’s pilot, Paul W.
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That’s the reason they did not react after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.” “To this day,” he said, “I felt the Japanese thought we only had one bomb. The bomb leveled Hiroshima with an equivalent force of 15,000 tons of TNT. “But, if you’re in a war, you have to have the guts to fight the war to win it.” “You’re going to kill a lot of civilians. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki, prevented that.
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The greater evil Van Kirk referred to was a possible invasion of Japan that likely would have resulted in mass American casualties. With the annual Vectren Dayton Air Show set for the weekend, Van Kirk’s testimony was a potent and timely reminder of the military’s might.