Lonnie J. Potter added these comments in the current discussion
du jour ...

For the record, Colonel Paul Tibbets [who was promoted to
Glory] appeared at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in
Prescott Arizona some three or four years ago. Although
Colonel Tibbets dropped the first nuclear device on Hiroshima
Japan, it must be noted that Major Sweeney, flying a B-29 by
the name of Bockscar, flew the second atomic strike against
Japan. Although his name is not readily known. It was the
second bomb that was dropped by Major Sweeney that convinced
Japan to give it up. I find it amazing that Colonel Tibbets, a
heroic gentleman, name is known and that Major Sweeney is not.
Maybe we should educate people to this fact.

I agree, but then, there are a LOT of inconsistencies and
"injustices" wrt war-time notoriety. One that comes immediately
to mind is the 1st of 2 flag raisings on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima
23Feb45. The 6 flag raisers that did the 1st one, including
patrol leader/3rd Platoon leader/Easy Co. XO, 1Lt Harold
"George" Shrier, was a first flag raiser. Historically, this was
the significant event, but history has largely ignored it in
favor of the 2nd flag raising with the larger flag. The main
reason this is so was because Joe Rosenthal took his Pulitzer
Prize winning photo, which went to to be the most famous
photograph from WWII.

Another interesting fact about Little Boy and Fat Man was how
highly successful the propaganda campaign was with President
Harry Truman's radio broadcast with words to the effect "we will
rain war from the air until Japan surrenders unconditionally.
Since Japanese physisists knew that they'd been bombed twice by
atomic bombs, and the government of Japan including its Prime
Ministor and Emperor Hirohito thought that Truman meant
continuing atomic bomb attacks, that they so feared getting
entire cities destroyed with a single bomb that convinced
Hirohito to throw in the towel. However, depending on who you
want to believe, it would have taken at least a year, maybe two,
to produce another Uranium bomb, and perhaps 9-12 months to
produce enough Plutonium for even a 3rd bomb, much less one or
two per month.

And, of all the B-17 air crews and aircraft in the war over
Europe, all of which served valiantly and tens of thousands of
air crews were lost, it is only the Memphis Belle that is
remembered primarily because it was the first to make it to the
magic 25 missions and be relieved.

Thus, just like in sports, the space race, just about anything in
personal, political, military, or any other facet of life that is
first is remembered most. Sometimes, only the first is remembered
at all. Yet another example was Apollo 11, first to land on the
moon. Few people know anything at all about any other Apollo
mission save for Apollo 13, the first and only failure to make
it. And, how many remember the deaths of 3 astronauts in a freak
fire in Apollo 1 just being tested on the launch pad?

None of this is fair, certainly, but reality trumps all the other
cards in the game of life. One more interesting note on famous
first in WWII was the B-29 bomber Dinah Might, the first B-29 to
land on Iwo Jima, I think on D+13. It was the first of some 2,500
B-29s to land there and perhaps as many as 500 P-47 and P-51
escort fighters. Dinah Might went on to another "distinction",
this time tragic, in that it was later shot down in a mission
over Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bockscar
Bockscar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bockscar, sometimes called Bock's Car or Bocks Car, is the
name of the United States Army Air Forces B-29 bomber that
dropped the "Fat Man" nuclear weapon over Nagasaki on August
9, 1945, the second atomic weapon used against Japan.

The name painted on the aircraft after the mission (shown
here) is a pun on "boxcar" after the name of its aircraft
commander, Captain Frederick C. Bock.

Atomic bomb mission
Bockscar was flown on that day by the crew of another B-29,
The Great Artiste, and was commanded by Major Charles W.
Sweeney, commander of the 509th Composite Group's only bomber
squadron, the 393rd. The Great Artiste, which was the assigned
aircraft of the crew with whom Sweeney most often flew, was
slotted in preliminary planning to drop the second bomb, but
it had been fitted with observation instruments for the
Hiroshima mission.

Bockscar had been flown by Sweeney and crew C-15 in three test
drop rehearsals of inert "Fat Man" assemblies in the eight
days leading up to the second mission, including the final
rehearsal the day before. Rather than move the instrumentation
from The Great Artiste to Bockscar, a complex and
time-consuming process, the crews of The Great Artiste and
Bockscar switched planes. The result was that the bomb was
dropped by Bockscar, flown by the crew C-15 of The Great
Artiste.

Bockcar also had severe problems identifying the drop point for
the Nagasacki 2nd atomic bomb, hence Ground Zero from quite a
distance. I forget, but perhaps a mile or two, which
"contributed" to far less destruction and far few Japanes killed
in the initial blast. Yet, it was in reality Bockscar that ended
the war, not the Enola Gay. Of course, I take nothing away from
Paul Tibbets, I am only commenting on some common examples of why
Maj. Sweeney is almost unknown today.

There was confusion over the name of the plane because an
initial eyewitness account by reporter William L. Laurence of
the New York Times said that the second bomb had been dropped
from The Great Artiste. Laurence, who accompanied the mission
as part of Bock's crew, had interviewed Sweeney and his crew
in depth and was aware that they referred to their airplane as
The Great Artiste. Except for Enola Gay, none of the 393rd's
B-29s had yet had names painted on the noses, and unaware of
the switch in aircraft, Laurence assumed victor 77 was The
Great Artiste.

Kokura was the primary target, but when Bockscar arrived at
its rendezvous point off the coast of Japan the third aircraft
of its flight (the photo ship Big Stink) was not present.
After fruitlessly waiting 40 minutes, Sweeney and Bock
proceeded to Kokura but found it obscured by clouds. Sweeney
had orders to drop the atomic bomb visually if possible, and
after three unsuccessful passes over Kokura, conferred with
weaponeer Commander Frederick Ashworth (USN). They agreed to
strike the secondary target, Nagasaki.

A combination of factors including confusion about a
malfunctioning transfer pump made fuel consumption a critical
factor. Ashworth did not want to be forced to dump the bomb
into the sea and decided to make a radar bombing run if
necessary. However, enough of an opening appeared in the cloud
cover to allow Bombardier Kermit Beahan to confirm Nagasaki
and the bomb was dropped, with ground zero being about 3/4
mile from the planned aiming point. This combined with
Nagasaki's position on the foothills (as opposed to
Hiroshima's mostly flat terrain) resulted in lower overall
casualties than in Hiroshima, with much of the blast confined
in the Urakami Valley.[9]

Yes, B-29 engines were extremely sensitive to supercharger boost
and fuel mixture thus many aircraft could not make it back to
Tinian or Guam without running out of fuel due to minor errors
from the flight engineer and/or unforeseen or unknown winds
aloft. I'm not sure, but wasn't the B-29 the first successful, or
maybe the first period, to have a flight engineer controlling the
complete operation of the engines?

Because of the delays in the mission, the B-29 did not have
sufficient fuel to reach the emergency landing field at Iwo
Jima, so Major Sweeney flew the aircraft to Okinawa, where,
despite being unable to make contact with the control tower,
he made a safe landing with virtually empty fuel tanks.

This perhaps proves my point as well as yours. I did not know
prior to reading your paragraph above that Sweeney landed on
Okinawa. I'm curious now to look at a map of the Pacific, but
certainly Okinawa was closer than Iwo by what, a couple hundred
miles? A great distance when you're running on fumes.

Airplane history

Bockscar, B-29-36-MO 44-27297, victor number 77, was assigned
to the 393rd Bomb Squadron of the 509th Composite Group. One
of 15 Silverplate B-29s used by the 509th on Tinian, Bockscar
was built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Plant at Omaha,
Nebraska at what is now Offutt Air Force Base, as a Block 35
aircraft. It was one of 10 modified as a Silverplate and
re-designated "Block 36". Delivered on March 19, 1945, to the
USAAF, it was assigned to Capt. Frederick C. Bock and crew
C-13 and flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah.

It left Wendover on June 11, 1945 for Tinian and arrived June
16. It was originally given the victor number 7 but on August
1 was given the triangle N tail markings of the 444th Bomb
Group as a security measure and had its victor changed to 77
to avoid misidentification with an actual 444th aircraft.

Bockscar was also used in 13 training and practice missions
from Tinian, and three combat missions in which it dropped
pumpkin bombs on industrial targets in Japan. Bock's crew
bombed Niihama and Musashino, and 1st Lt. Don Albury and crew
C-15 bombed Toyama.

It returned to the United States in November 1945 and served
with the 509th at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. It was
nominally assigned to the Operation Crossroads task force but
there are no records indicating that it deployed for the
tests. In August 1946 it was assigned to the 4105th Base Unit
at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field, Arizona, for storage.

At Davis-Monthan it was placed on display as the aircraft that
bombed Nagasaki, but in the markings of The Great Artiste. In
September 1946 title was passed to the Air Force Museum (now
the National Museum of the United States Air Force) at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, but it was not moved
there until September 26, 1961, where its original markings
were restored.

Bockscar is now on permanent display at the National Museum of
the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio. This display
includes a replica of the "Fat Man" bomb and signage that
states that it was "The aircraft that ended WWII". This is in
contrast to the display of Enola Gay at the Smithsonian's
Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, where little mention is made of
that aircraft's role in WWII.

In 2005, a short documentary was made about Charles Sweeney's
recollections of the Nagasaki mission aboard Bockscar,
including details of the mission preparation, titled
"Nagasaki: The Commander's Voice."

Regularly assigned crew

Crew C-13 (manned "The Great Artiste" on the Nagasaki mission)

a.. Capt. Frederick C. Bock, aircraft commander
b.. Lt. Hugh C. Ferguson, co-pilot
c.. Lt. Leonard A. Godfrey, navigator
d.. Lt. Charles Levy, bombardier
e.. Master Sgt. Roderick F. Arnold, flight engineer
f.. Sgt. Ralph D. Belanger, assistant flight engineer
g.. Sgt. Ralph D. Curry, radio operator
h.. Sgt. William C. Barney, radar operator
i.. Sgt. Robert J. Stock, tail gunner


Nagasaki mission crew

Crew C-15 (normally assigned to The Great Artiste):

a.. Maj. Charles W. Sweeney, aircraft commander
b.. Capt. Charles Donald Albury, co-pilot (pilot of Crew
C-15) c.. 2nd Lt. Fred Olivi, regular co-pilot
d.. Capt. James Van Pelt, navigator
e.. Capt. Raymond "Kermit" Beahan, bombardier
f.. Master Sgt. John D. Kuharek, flight engineer
g.. Staff Sgt. Ray Gallagher, gunner, assistant flight
engineer h.. Staff Sgt. Edward Buckley, radar operator
i.. Sgt. Abe Spitzer, radio operator
j.. Sgt. Albert Dehart, tail gunner

Also on board were the following additional mission personnel:

a.. Cmdr. Frederick L. Ashworth (USN), weaponeer
b.. Lt. Philip Barnes (USN), assistant weaponeer
c.. 2nd Lt. Jacob Beser, radar countermeasures

Lonnie, yours is indeed an outstanding commentary on Bockscar and
its flight crew. Thank you for posting it, I shall put your post
in a safe place for future reference.

--
HP, aka Jerry