Charles Sweeney
Brigadier General Charles W. Sweeney (1919 - July 15 2004) was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and the pilot who flew the "Fat Man" atomic bomb to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Biography
He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and began flying while attending North Quincy High School. After graduation in 1937 he attended classes at Boston University and Purdue University, then joined the U.S. Army Air Corps on April 28, 1941, as an aviation cadet. After receiving his pilot wings and a commission as a second lieutenant, Sweeney trained for two years at the Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana.
Sweeney served as an operations officer and a test pilot at Eglin Field, Florida. In 1944 he was promoted to major and assigned as a B-29 Superfortress pilot instructor at Grand Island, Nebraska.
509th Composite Group
Sweeney then became an instructor in the atomic missions training project, Project Alberta, at Wendover Army Airfield, Utah. Selected to be part of the 509th Composite Group, he was named commander of the 320th Troop Carrier Squadron on January 6, 1945. Initially his squadron used C-47 Skytrain and C-46 Commando transports on hand to conduct the top secret operations to supply the 509th, but in April 1945 it acquired five C-54 Skymasters, which had the range to deliver personnel and materiel to the western Pacific area.
On May 4, 1945, Sweeney became commander of the 393rd Bomb Squadron, the combat element of the 509th, in charge of 15 Silverplate B-29s and their flight and ground crews, 535 men in all. In June and July Sweeney moved his unit to North Field on the island of Tinian in the Marianas.
In addition to supervising the intensive training of his flight crews during July 1945, Sweeney was slated to command the second atomic bomb mission. He trained with the crew of Captain (Charles D.) Don Albury aboard their B-29 The Great Artiste, and was aircraft commander on the training mission of July 11. He and the crew flew five of the nine rehearsal test drops of inert Little Boy and Fat Man bomb assemblies in preparation for the missions.
On August 6, 1945, Sweeney and Albury piloted The Great Artiste as the instrumention support aircraft for the atpmic bomb attack on Hiroshima.
Three days later, on August 9 1945, Major Sweeney commanded Bockscar, the B-29 that dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. Having diverted from the primary target, Kokura, because of weather conditions, Bockscar dropped a plutonium weapon with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. Approximately 70,000 people were killed in the initial explosion and 60% of Nagasaki destroyed. Japan surrendered six days after the bombing.
In November 1945, Sweeney returned with the 509th Composite Group to Roswell Army Air Base in New Mexico to train aircrews for the atomic testing mission, Operation Crossroads.
Post-war activities
Sweeney left active duty with the rank of lieutenant colonel on June 28, 1946, but remained active with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. On February 21, 1956, Col. Sweeney was named commander of its 102nd Air Defense Wing and shortly after, on April 6, was promoted to brigadier general. He retired in 1976.
Throughout his life Sweeney remained convinced of the appropriateness and necessity of the bombing, and wrote War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission to defend the action in light of subsequent historical questioning. He also appeared in the 1970's television series "World At War" and was seen explaining the build up to the mission raids.
In his later years Charles Sweeney performed in various air shows doing many maneuvers to awe crowds. Sweeney died at age 84 on July 15 2004 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
A short documentary featuring an audio recording of Sweeney describing the Nagasaki mission preparation and execution called "Nagasaki: The Commander's Voice" was made in 2005. The audio recording, from 2002, was the last one made before his death.