Necessary Evil (aircraft)

Necessary Evil
Type	Boeing B-29-45-MO Superfortress
Manufacturer	Glenn L. Martin Company
Serial	44-86291
Radio code	Victor 91
In service	May 18, 1945 - November 1956
Fate	Struck from the Air Force inventory in November 1956, Necessary Evil was transferred to the U.S. Navy and used as a target at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, California.

Necessary Evil, also referred to as Plane #91, was the name of

Victor 91), participating in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima

on August 6, 1945.

Assigned to the

393d Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group

, it was used as a camera plane to photograph the explosion and effects of the bomb, and to carry scientific observers. At the time of the attack the plane was not named and was known only by its 393d Victor number. The mission was flown by crew B-10, with Captain George Marquardt as aircraft commander.

The crew regularly assigned to this airplane in turn flew on the

Big Stink

, though without their aircraft commander, who was ill.

Aircraft history

Built at the

Circle-R tail markings of the 6th Bomb Group

as a security measure and had its Victor changed to 91 to avoid misidentification with actual 6th BG aircraft. It was named and had its nose art painted after the Nagasaki mission.

In addition to the Hiroshima mission, Necessary Evil's operations history on Tinian included 10 training and practice missions, and three combat missions in which it dropped

Koriyama

, all flown by 1st Lt. Ray and crew C-14.

Colonel Paul Tibbets had chosen Necessary Evil, commanded by Captain George Marquardt, to lead a third atomic bomb drop against Japan.

Henry Stimson

stated following the bombing of Nagasaki, "These two heavy blows have fallen in quick succession upon the Japanese and there will be quite a little space before we intend to drop another". The primary target was the city of Koromo (current day

Stimson notes in his diary entry August 10, 1945 "[Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal] told me that they were planning another big attack by [Pacific Third Fleet Admiral William "Bull"] Halsey and he was afraid this would go on.".^[2] Colonel Tibbets under orders by General Curtis LeMay, dispatched Lt. Col. Classen, the deputy group commander, in the unnamed victor 94 and crew B-6 in Jabit III, together with their ground crews, to Wendover AAFB to stage for the possibility of transporting further Fat Man [Model 1561] bomb assemblies to Tinian.^[3] At Los Alamos, the second plutonium core for the third bomb had been fabricated and was ready for shipment from Mare Island Naval Shipyard to Tinian by special courier Lt. William A. King on a C-54 cargo aircraft of the 509th CG. These shipments were halted on August 14, 1945 ^[4]

by orders from Washington. "Kuromo" appears in a target log below Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Smithsonian Channel documentary The Men Who Brought The Dawn.

In December 1945 Necessary Evil returned to the United States with the 509th CG to

Biggs Air Force Base, Texas

.

Necessary Evil was re-configured as a TB-29 trainer by the Oklahoma City Materiel Area at Tinker Air Force Base in April 1950. It was subsequently assigned to: