Hiroshima

1945 · réf. 19345 — 1945. Van Kirk Theodore "Dutch." Signed poster reproducing the navigator's log of the August 6 1945 Enola Gay mission documents the flight that delivered the first atomic bomb used in warfare. Van Kirk served as navigator aboard the B-29 plotting the aircraft's course from North Field on Tinian to Hiroshima and back during a mission that initiated the wartime use of nuclear weapons and transformed military strategy international relations and public understanding of technological destruction. The National Museum of the United States Air Force records that the Enola Gay departed at 2:45 a.m. and released the uranium bomb known as "Little Boy" over Hiroshima later that morning. The poster provides a signed visual chronology for the study of World War II aviation operational navigation the Manhattan Project and the beginning of the nuclear age. Hiroshima Mission Navigator's Log of the Enola Gay. Issuer place and date of printing not identified. Poster reproducing three manuscript pages entirely in Van Kirk's hand; dimensions not supplied. The successive entries trace the mission from takeoff through navigation toward Japan the bombing run and the aircraft's return to base. The log records the 0245 departure the turn onto a 345-degree heading and the climb to 30800 feet with "BOMB AWAY" entered at 0915. These operational notations reduce the mission to headings altitudes times and navigational actions preserving the procedural language by which the crew recorded an event of extraordinary human consequence. Signed at the bottom "Theodore J. 'Dutch' Van Kirk Navigator-Enola Gay Hiroshima Aug. 6 1945." Because the three manuscript pages are photographically or mechanically reproduced the poster should not be described as Van Kirk's original wartime log; only the concluding inscription and signature are represented as original autograph material. The Enola Gay's release of "Little Boy" over Hiroshima marked the first use of a nuclear weapon in war; the bomb detonated approximately 1800 feet above the city. The reproduced entries offer an operational perspective distinct from later narrative accounts showing how the navigator organized the mission through timed observations and course calculations while leaving the destruction below largely outside the log's technical vocabulary. No creasing staining fading tears or edge losses are identified; reproduced manuscript images and Van Kirk's signed inscription remain clear near fine. Signed commemorative record joining the navigator's minute-by-minute flight chronology with direct identification by the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew. unknown