"Dutch" Van Kirk

http://www.talk920.com/news/articles/last-crew-member-of-enola-gay-dies-in-georgia

The death of a genuine American hero, part of the Greatest Generation, may not make the national news. Yet we will hear all about Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian. Something about that seems wrong. Thanks for sharing, 75. I thank Mr. VanKirk for his service and may he rest in peace.

WC

Folks like the late Mr. Van Kirk get through my reject filter, The soilebrities don't.

I wonder if I knew his daughter. Years ago in the early 80s I was going to college with this lady. We got to talking once and she was talking about her dad. She said that he would get by himself at times in his study and cry. She said they knew he was in WW2 but did not know what he did. He refused to talk about it One day he called all his kids in a room. He told them they were old enough then to know what he did. He told them he was a crewmember on the Enola Gay and had helped to drop the bomb. He told them each morning after that he had to wake up and know his actions had killed 100k+ people. HE said that grieved him that innocent children and adults had died. He said he had no regrets as it was the right thing to do and would do it again. But he said the guilt of killing innocent people was something he wouldn't wish on anyone. I lost track of her after we graduated but I saw where one of this mans daughters was named Vickie and I believe that was the name of the lady I knew. He also worked at dupont and there was a dupont factory where I went to school. So I wonder if it was this man she talked about.
A brave generation to say the least. MY FIL was in the battle of Midway, I think he was also at the surrender of the Japanese as well.

It never ceases to amaze me that they were able to accomplish the development construction and delivery of such a wildly arcane weapon and get it to the size and weight such that it could be carried aloft by an aircraft and have a group of instantaneous explosions triggered simultaneously controlled in flight by vacuum tube based circuitry, reliably in the case of the second bomb. It just staggers the imagination to consider it was done in such a short period of time. and there was so few precedents for each of the builders to rely on.