Clearwater Vet Recounts Hiroshima Bombing Mission

As America honors men and women who have served, MacDill Air Force Base is putting a spotlight on local veterans who helped write the pages of history.

In its “Local Heroes Series,” the 6th Air Mobility Wing featured Clearwater’s own Russell Gackenbach, 91. Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the B-29 Superfortress, Necessary Evil, during its nuclear bombing mission over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.

Gackenbach sat down with one of the base’s writers earlier this year to mark the 70th anniversary of that fateful day. He is the last surviving member of the mission team, the base noted.

Gackenbach said he and others included in the mission were approached in September 1944 about the formation of “an elite group that was to be made up from the best in the Air Force,” he told MacDill’s writer. All recruits were told was that the missions would be dangerous and top secret.

That secrecy, Gackenbach said, extended even to the day the bombs were dropped.

“We did not know what type of bomb we had; did not know what type of blast to expect; did not know the effect off it,” said Gackenbach. “The only thing we were told was, ‘don’t fly through the cloud.’”

To read more of Gackenbach’s story, visit MacDill Air Force Base online.

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Photos courtesy of MacDill Air Force Base