“I believe that when you’re in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line. “Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan death march, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Super fortress bomber. In a war, there are so many questionable things done. The original log, written by the navigator that day, Theodore Dutch Van Kirk, was sold in. I was caught by surprise to find all this material at the museum. And finally, you could see a replica of the Enola Gay’s Navigator’s Log. “It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. B-29 Enola Gay replica and Little Boy bomb replica (at Pima Air and Space Museum, Tucson, AZ). We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat.
Van Kirk explained in a 1995 interview with the New York Times: “Under the same circumstances – and the key words are ‘the same circumstances’ – yes, I would do it again. The bombing is said to have dramatically shortened the war, forcing the Japanese to surrender. "By 0931 they were flying over Mishima, and just past 29° 43′ E 137° 03′ E, a little over an hour and a half later, Van Kirk notes ’10:52 – Cloud Gone’." The log features a detailed description of the attack, as Sotheby’s relates: "At 0915½ (30 seconds past 8:15am Hiroshima local time) in the position field Van Kirk notes the action that would end the war and change the world forever, ‘Bomb Away’, further writing in the remarks field ‘Circle E of Target.’ Navigator Captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, who died in 2014, was the final surviving member of the Enola Gay’s crew.
It starred in sale of Americana and books and manuscripts. The original log kept by the navigator of the Enola Gay made $372,500 at Sotheby’s New York on December 6.