Wednesday, July 30, 2014

And then there were none...

Mr. Theodore "Dutch" VanKirk, the last surviving crew member of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay" on 6 August 1945, has passed away in a Stone Mountain, Georgia retirement home.

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5 comments:

Unix-Jedi said...

Drat.

Saw him speak 3 years ago, he was an amazing speaker.

He was very hard-of-hearing, but that was the only evidence of his age.

He certainly changed a lot of minds/ideas on the college campus where I saw him - most of whom came (and some attacked) with no idea of what the situation was in WWII, but they sure knew it was America's fault.

9:14 AM, July 30, 2014
SPEMack said...

A fraternity brother emailed me the same link this morning. He simply stated

"Old guys got it done back in the day."

11:48 AM, July 30, 2014
Maxwell said...

It's truly humbling, to think of what those guys did. Words fail me, every time.

2:30 PM, July 30, 2014
Will said...

For those who want to know what the Allies and the Japanese dodged, by dropping those two bombs, read this book:

The Japanese high command was willing to accept an estimated 20 MILLION of their people dead, or more, in the attempt to keep us off their islands. Our costs would have probably been over 1M, minimum, if we had invaded.

Lots of data that was not looked at, after they surrendered. Chilling.

Hell to Pay, by D M Giangreco

6:21 PM, July 30, 2014
jdunmyer said...

Some years ago, I saw that Paul Tibbets was going to be at the local airport during a fly-in of warbirds. He'd be signing copies of his book. It was a great honor to shake his hand and get his autograph on his book.

Darned if I know where that book is now, though. <>

7:16 PM, July 30, 2014

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