Posted on 12/06/2005 12:59:00 PM PST by Borges
SANTA FE, N.M. - Frederick L. "Dick" Ashworth, the weaponeer aboard the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, has died at 94.
He died Saturday while undergoing heart surgery in Phoenix, family friend Glen Smith said.
Ashworth, who retired in 1968 as a Navy vice admiral, was assigned to the Los Alamos-based Manhattan Project that built the A-bomb.
Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, he was aboard the bomber that dropped a weapon nicknamed Little Boy on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Ashworth was assigned as the weaponeer, responsible for arming the bomb during the flight. Estimates of the death toll in Nagasaki range from 60,000 to 80,000.
Ashworth, in an August talk to a Los Alamos historical group, said the mission was "fraught with problems," including clouds that hid the city of Kokura, which was the primary target, the potential for a crash landing with the bomb aboard and low fuel after the weapon exploded.
The weather over Kokura was so bad that B-29 — named Bock's Car after its usual commander, Frederick Bock — flew on to Nagasaki.
Ashworth said that during the return flight, the crew heard a radio report that the Japanese had approached the Swiss about surrender. "That gave us a pretty good inkling that maybe, by golly, the war might be over," he recalled.
Japan surrendered unconditionally on Aug. 15.
Ashworth was born in Beverly, Mass., and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1933. After the war, he did military liaison work with the Atomic Energy Commission and commanded the Navy's Sixth Fleet, then based in France.
He is survived by his wife, Ercie Bell Ashworth; three sons; three grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
Services are set for Thursday at Santa Fe National Cemetery.
He saved millions of lives! God Bless him! True Hero!
Bocks Car still resides at the Wright-Patterson AFB museum.
Thousands of WWII veterans visit it every day. They run their hands along the plane, (that is still 100% intact and probably flyable) and cry.
Thank you, it had to be done. May his family remember him with pride.
Thank you, it had to be done. May his family remember him with pride.
Another of our World War II airman gone. Very sad. My father, who piloted B-17s is now 81. He's doing OK, but I know I won't have him with me forever. We are losing that generation at an accellerating pace.
As usual the AP proves they're a bunch of morons.
"Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima. "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki.
Correction to post 3
Thousands visit it every year, not day.
I wonder how quickly the "insurgents" would stop if we nuked one the "sunni trianle cities"?
Dart board approach to which city works for me!
Mecca works just fine.
During the Haj is even better.
I know a geologist in town who is in his eighties and was a B-17 pilot whose plane went down and was a POW in Germany.
May God bless and keep him.
Ignorant poltroon. The Editor should be hogtied to a Pumpkin Bomb, loaded aboard Enola Gay or another SILVERPLATE B-29 and dropped, Slim Pickens style, over Hiroshima or Nagasaki to atone for the error. This is sheer ignorance. Ashworth had a flying career in Europe prior to his stint at Los Alamos. Basically, he became an atomic ballistics guy like Deak Parsons. Ashworth's job was much easier than Parson's. Ashworth, iirc, only had to switch the arming plugs on Fat Man from Green (Safe) to Red (Live). Parsons had to actually go into the bomb bay and arm the rifle in Little Boy's ass end.
Brave men, all.
BTW, Bock's Car is in flyable condition, with some restoration at the Boeing facility in Wichita. Enola Gay has been restored to such condition that it, too, could be brought into airworthy condition after reworking and rewiring at Boeing.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
The aiming point on that Sunday morning was the Nagasaki cathedral. In less than a minute, these American Christians did what Japanese shintos had been unable to do in three centuries: they obliterated the worshipping Christian community in that city.
If the japanese were talking to the Swiss they wee wasting their time. Switzerland didnt have any A bombs in the air.
They certainly knew who to call after Nagasaki.
I hate AP. Bockscar dropped "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. "Little Boy" was the Hiroshima bomb.
How many Christians died at Pearl Harbor or the Bataan Death March, or in the Rape of Nanking. And how many would have been slaughtered by the Japanese had we not dropped Fat Man and Little Boy?
I would like to personaly thank him and his family for keeping my father from going back to the Pacific theater for a Japan, main island, invasion (after resting state side in a military hospital) and for making ME possible.
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