Meet Theodore Van Kirk, the sole surviving crew member of the Enola Gay. This smiling 89 year old veteren, was directly responsible for the deaths of 230,000 Japanese people on 6th August 1945, when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb over the port city of Hiroshima.
He is interviewed by Ed Pilkington in G2 today. It's really rather fascinating. Just goes to show the brutality of war and the conditioning that he received within the US Air Force in order to render him capable to take part in the highly specialist bombing raid.
Factoid alert: The Enola Gay flew for 8.5 hours, covering a distance of 1,800 miles to get to the drop zone. The bomb was then dropped and the plane had to turn in mid-air and retreat a distance of a least 11 miles before the bomb exploded. There was a 43 second window in which to do this.
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