Charles Sweeney
Charles Sweeney | |
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102nd Tactical Fighter Wing | |
Battles/wars | World War II
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Awards | Silver Star Air Medal |
Charles William Sweeney (December 27, 1919 – July 16, 2004) was an officer in the
Military career
509th Composite Group
Sweeney became an instructor in the atomic missions training project,
On May 4, 1945, Sweeney became commander of the
In addition to supervising the intensive training of his flight crews during July 1945, Sweeney was slated to command the second atomic bomb mission. He trained with the crew of Captain (Charles D.) Don Albury aboard their B-29 The Great Artiste, and was aircraft commander on the training mission of July 11. He and the crew flew five of the nine rehearsal test drops of inert Little Boy and Fat Man bomb assemblies in preparation for the missions.
On 6 August 1945, Sweeney and Albury piloted The Great Artiste as the instrumentation and observation support aircraft for the
Bombing of Nagasaki
On 9 August 1945, Major Sweeney commanded
Before takeoff, Tibbets warned Sweeney that he had lost at least 45 minutes of flying time because of the fuel pump problem, and to take no more than fifteen minutes at the rendezvous before proceeding directly to the primary target.[3]
After takeoff from Tinian, Bockscar reached its rendezvous point and after circling for an extended period, found The Great Artiste, but not The Big Stink.[4] Climbing to 30,000 feet, the assigned rendezvous altitude, both aircraft slowly circled Yakushima Island. Though Sweeney had been ordered not to wait at the rendezvous for the other aircraft longer than fifteen minutes before proceeding to the primary target, Sweeney continued to wait for The Big Stink, perhaps at the urging of Commander Frederick Ashworth, the plane's weaponeer.[5] After exceeding the original rendezvous time limit by a half-hour, Bockscar, accompanied by The Great Artiste, proceeded to the primary target, Kokura.[6] No fewer than three bomb runs were made, but the delay at the rendezvous had resulted in 7/10ths cloud cover over the primary target, and the bombardier was unable to drop.[7] By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close, and Japanese fighter planes could be seen climbing to intercept Bockscar.[8]
Poor bombing visibility and an increasingly critical fuel shortage eventually forced Bockscar to divert from Kokura and attack the secondary target, Nagasaki.
Low on fuel, Bockscar barely made it to the runway on Okinawa. With only enough fuel for one landing attempt, Sweeney brought Bockscar in fast and hard, ordering every available distress flare on board to be fired as he did so.[15] The number two engine died from fuel starvation as Bockscar began its final approach.[16] Touching the runway hard, the heavy B-29 slewed left and towards a row of parked B-24 bombers before the pilots managed to regain control.[16] With both pilots standing on the brakes, Sweeney made a swerving 90-degree turn at the end of the runway to avoid going over the cliff into the ocean.[17] 2nd Lt. Jacob Beser recalled that at this point, two engines had died from the fuel starvation, while "the centrifugal force resulting from the turn was almost enough to put us through the side of the airplane."[18]
After Bockscar returned to Tinian, Tibbets recorded that he was faced with the dilemma of considering “if any action should be taken against the airplane commander, Charles Sweeney, for failure to command.”[19][20][21] After meeting on Guam with Tibbets and Sweeney, General Curtis LeMay, chief of staff for the Strategic Air Forces, confronted Sweeney, stating, "You fucked up, didn't you, Chuck?", to which Sweeney made no reply.[22] LeMay then turned to Tibbets and told him that an investigation into Sweeney's conduct of the mission would serve no useful purpose.[22]
In November 1945, Sweeney returned with the 509th Composite Group to Roswell Army Air Base in New Mexico to train aircrews for the atomic testing mission, Operation Crossroads.
Post-war activities
Sweeney left active duty with the rank of
In the 1960s, Sweeney coordinated civil defense in Boston,[23] serving as the Boston Director of Civil Defense.
He retired in 1976 as a major general in the Air National Guard.[24] He also appeared in the 1970s television series The World at War and was seen explaining the USAAF buildup to the mission raids.
Throughout his life Sweeney remained convinced of the appropriateness and necessity of the bombing. "I saw these beautiful young men who were being slaughtered by an evil, evil military force," he said in 1995. "There's no question in my mind that President Truman made the right decision." At the same time, he said, "As the man who commanded the last atomic mission, I pray that I retain that singular distinction."[25]
Later life
Near the end of his life, Sweeney wrote a controversial and factually disputed memoir of the atomic bombing and the 509th Composite Group, War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission.[26][27] In War's End, Sweeney defended the decision to drop the atomic bomb in light of subsequent historical questioning. However, it was Sweeney's other assertions regarding the Nagasaki atomic mission, along with various anecdotes regarding the 509th and its crews that drew the most criticism. Tibbets, Major "Dutch" Van Kirk, Colonel Thomas Ferebee and others vigorously disputed Sweeney's account of events.[28] Partly in response to War's End, Tibbets issued a revised version of his own autobiography in 1998, adding a new section on the Nagasaki attack in which he harshly criticized Sweeney's actions during the mission.[19][20][21]
In his later years Sweeney performed in various air shows doing many maneuvers to awe crowds. Sweeney died at age 84 on July 16, 2004, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.[29]
A short documentary featuring an audio recording of Sweeney describing the Nagasaki mission preparation and execution called "Nagasaki: The Commander's Voice" was made in 2005. The 2002 audio recording was the last one made before his death.
Awards
U.S. Air Force Command Pilot Badge | |||||||||||
Silver Star | Air Medal | ||||||||||
Combat "V"
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American Defense Service Medal | American Campaign Medal | |||||||||
campaign stars
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World War II Victory Medal | Army of Occupation Medal | |||||||||
National Defense Service Medal with service star |
Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal | Air Force Longevity Service Award
| |||||||||
hourglass device
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Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon
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Massachusetts Air National Guard Service Medal |
See also
- Paul Tibbets, Sweeney's counterpart on the mission which dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima
References
- ^ Polmar, Norman, The Enola Gay: the B-29 that dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution, (2004), p. 35
- ISBN 0-7432-1198-7, p. 630
- ^ Miller, Donald, pp. 630–631: Tibbets stated that he told Sweeney to "go to your rendezvous point and tell the other planes the same thing I told you at Iwo Jima [the Hiroshima mission rendezvous]: 'Make one 360-degree turn, be on my wing, or I'm going to the target anyway.'"
- ^ Miller, Donald, p. 631
- ^ Miller, Donald, pp. 630, 631: Tibbets noted that regardless of any advice he may have received, Sweeney was the aircraft commander and remained responsible at all times for command of the aircraft and the mission.
- ^ Miller, Donald, pp. 631–632
- ^ Miller, Donald P., pp. 630, 632–633: In making an unheard-of third bomb run with a $25-million-dollar atomic weapon, it appeared to others that Sweeney appeared determined not to abort the mission and return with Fat Man, regardless of the risk to the aircraft or the flight crew.
- ^ Miller, Donald, p. 633
- ^ Miller, Donald, p. 632
- ^ Miller, Donald, pp. 633–634
- ^ Miller, Donald, pp. 634–635
- ISBN 0-275-95475-7(1996), p. 92.
- ^ Miller, Donald P., pp. 626, 638
- ^ Nuke-Rebuke: Writers & Artists Against Nuclear Energy & Weapons (The Contemporary anthology series). The Spirit That Moves Us Press. May 1, 1984. pp. 22–29.
- ^ Walker, Stephen, Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima, New York: HarperCollins (2005) pp. 13–14
- ^ a b Walker, Stephen, p. 14
- ^ Glines, C.V., World War II: The Second Atomic Bomb That Ended The War, Aviation History (January 1997), pp. 36–37
- ^ Glines, C.V., p. 37
- ^ a b Puttré, Michael, Nagasaki Revisited, retrieved 8 April 2011
- ^ ISBN 0-9703666-0-4
- ^ a b Miller, Donald L., D-days in the Pacific, New York: Simon & Schuster (2005), pp. 361–362
- ^ a b Miller, Donald L., pp. 361–362
- ^ Bernstein, Adam (19 July 2004). "Charles W. Sweeney Dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved 13 April 2020.
- ^ Charles H. Sweeney; Led Bomb Drop Over Nagasaki (washingtonpost.com)
- ^ Charles W. Sweeney Dies; Led Bomb Drop Over Nagasaki
- ^ Puttré, Michael, Nagasaki Revisited Archived 2011-06-10 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 8 April 2011
- Dutch Van Kirk(Enola Gay's navigator), and other surviving members of the 509th Composite Group were reportedly outraged at many of the factual assertions by Sweeney in War's End
- ^ Coster-Mullen, John, Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man, publ. J. Coster-Mullen, End Notes, (2004)
- ^ Goldstein, Richard (19 July 2004). "Charles Sweeney, 84, Pilot in Bombing of Nagasaki, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 January 2019.
Bibliography
- Brooks, Lester. Behind Japan's Surrender: Secret Struggle That Ended an Empire. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968.
- Grayling, A.C. Among the Dead Cities. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. ISBN 0-7475-7671-8.
- Miller, Merle and Abe Spitzer. We Dropped the A-Bomb.[1] New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1946.[ISBN missing]
- Olivi, Lt.Col. USAF (Ret) Fred J. Decision At Nagasaki: The Mission That Almost Failed. Privately Printed, 1999. ISBN 0-9678747-0-X.
- Sweeney, Maj.Gen. USAF (Ret) Charles, with James A. Antonucci and Marion K. Antonucci. War's End: an Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission. New York: Avon Books, 1997. ISBN 0-380-97349-9.
- Tomatsu, Shomei. 11:02 Nagasaki. Tokyo: Shashin Dojinsha, 1966.[ISBN missing]
External links
- Annotated bibliography for Charles Sweeney from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues
- "Official USAF biography BG Charles W. Sweeney". Archived from the original on February 8, 2004. Retrieved May 9, 2007.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) - Reflections from above: an American pilot's perspective on the mission which dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki
- Eyewitness account of atomic bombing over Nagasaki, by William Laurence, New York Times
- Sweeney explains to Reed Irvine how, incredibly, he and Paul Tibbetts became the first Americans into Japan after the bombing on YouTube.
- Charles Sweeney at Find a Grave
- ^ Spitzer, Abe (1946). We Dropped The A-Bomb. New York, T.Y. Crowell Company.