He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee for Special Mission No. The mission went perfectly, Van Kirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. As the 9,000-kilogram bomb nicknamed 'Little Boy' fell toward the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives. They didn't know whether the bomb would actually work and, if it did, whether its shockwaves would rip their plane to shreds. They counted - one thousand one, one thousand two - reaching the 43 seconds they'd been told it would take for detonation and heard nothing. Theodore (Dutch) Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug.
