Last surviving crew in US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima dies

New York: Theodore Van Kirk, the last surviving crew member of the US B-29 bomber that dropped the world's first atomic bomb on the Japanese city Hiroshima during World War II, has died at the age of 93.

Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress aircraft that dropped 'Little Boy' atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 that killed 140,000 people, more than half the population of the city. He was was 24 years old at the time.

Van Kirk died on Monday at his home in Stone Mountain, Georgia.

His son Thomas confirmed the death, The New York Times reported.

The Enola Gay was piloted by Col Paul W Tibbets Jr and carrying a crew of 12. It took off from Tinian in the Mariana Islands with a uranium bomb built under extraordinary secrecy in the vast Manhattan Project.

Once the bomber reached over Hiroshima, Major Ferebee released the bomb, known as Little Boy, and 43 seconds later, at 1,890 feet above ground zero, it exploded in a nuclear inferno, leaving tens of thousands dead or dying and turning Hiroshima into scorched devastation.

"The plane jumped and made a sound like sheet metal snapping" after the explosion, Van Kirk told The New York Times on the 50th anniversary of the raid in 1995.

"Shortly after the second wave, we turned to where we could look out and see the cloud, where the city of Hiroshima had been.

"The entire city was covered with smoke and dust and dirt. I describe it looking like a pot of black, boiling tar. You could see some fires burning on the edge of the city," he added at the time.

On August 9, another B-29 dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing some 70,000 people. On August 15, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to an end.

Van Kirk was born and reared in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. He attended college for a year, then became an Army Air Forces cadet in October 1941.

He retired from military service in 1946 as a major, having received the Silver Star and Distinguished Flying Cross. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering from Bucknell University and became a marketing executive with DuPont.

He is survived by two sons and two daughters.