CARON, GEORGE R. “BOB.” (1919-1995). Tail gunner of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. ALS. (“George R. Caron / Tail Gunner – Enola Gay”). 2¾ pp. 8vo. N.p., October 12, 1992. To Danny.

“I’ll try to answer your letter to the best of my ability.

Your Grandpa had many more combat missions that I did and must have encountered much more flak than I and yes, it was scary. You couldn’t shoot back at it.

I only had five missions over Japan and got a lot of flak just on the first one. Because of our speed due to the stripped down airplane, it was all behind the tail but not close enough to hit us. I’m not ashamed to say that I said some ‘Hail Marys’ (I’m Catholic).

I have about 2,500 hours flying the B-29 but most of it was in the States on the first XB-29 flight test crew and training for the A-bomb mission over a 2½ yr time period.

The victory over Germany was truly great but it wasn’t until Japan was beaten that there was peace.

We were given Hiroshima as our primary target at the briefing the night before. Our navigator hit it right on the button. All I knew was that it would be a new weapon with the power of 20,000 of TNT. This was what Tibbets told us at the briefing. On the way, Tibbets came back to the waist of the plane and I came forward from the tail for a short time. I asked him if we were splitting atoms today and he said, “Yes.” The enclosed copy of a clipping [not present] tells it in more detail and more so in many books. I don’t know if I sent your Dad a copy of the clipping but this one is for you.

Yes the Brooklyn Dodger hat became famous. The Dodger front office really played it up in the N.Y. papers. I wish I still had it today but it was stolen after the war.

Well, I must get busy with some chores so will close. Good luck to you and keep playing baseball – it’s a great game. I loved the game and wasn’t too bad at it...”

On August 6, 1945, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb on an enemy, destroying the Japanese city of Hiroshima and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Three days later, the Enola Gay served as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the aircraft Bockscar which dropped another atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki, prompting Japan’s surrender and effectively ending World War II, the war in Europe having ended in May with Germany’s surrender.

As the sole crewman in a defensive position aboard the Enola Gay, Caron was the first person to witness from the air the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima and it was his photographs alone which captured the event.

A graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School in Brooklyn, New York, Caron wore his Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap during the Enola Gay flight, as recounted in our letter. He later recorded his eyewitness account of the events in the book Fire of a Thousand Suns, The George R. “Bob” Caron Story, Tail Gunner of the Enola Gay.

American Air Force pilot Paul Tibbets (1915-2007) had been piloting anti-submarine missions over the Atlantic since the attack on Pearl Harbor and flew 43 bombing campaigns over Europe. In 1943, he was tapped to help develop the Boeing B-29 Superfortress and served as a technical advisor on the nuclear testing. It was Tibbets who selected the aircraft from the assembly line and gave the Enola Gay aircraft her name, in memory of his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. Placed in command of the 509th Composite Group, he piloted the Enola Gay’s flight over Hiroshima.

Written on the rectos of three separate sheets and in excellent condition.