Victor 90 left without one of the support members when Major Hopkins ordered Robert Serber of Project Alberta to leave the plane – reportedly after the B-29 had already taxied onto the runway – because the scientist had forgotten his parachute. Since Serber was the only crew member who knew how to operate the high-speed camera, Hopkins had to be instructed by radio from Tinian on its use.
The aircraft failed to make its rendezvous with the remainder of the strike flight, which completed the mission without it. It did however arrive at Nagasaki in time to photograph the effects of the blast – albeit at an altitude of 39,000 feet (12,000 meters) rather than the planned 30,000 feet (9,100 meters) – then recovered at Yontan Airfield, Okinawa, with both Bockscar and the B-29 The Great Artiste.
The aircraft originally was assigned the Victor (unit-assigned identification) number 10 but on 1 August 1945 was given the circle R tail markings of the 6th Bombardment Group as a security measure and had its Victor changed to 90 to avoid misidentification with actual 6th Bombardment Group aircraft. On 23 July 1945, with ColonelPaul Tibbets at the controls, it dropped a dummy "Little Boy" atomic bomb assembly off Tinian to test its radaraltimeter detonators.
On 6 August 1945, the aircraft was flown by crew B-8 (commanded by First Lieutenant Charles McKnight) as a back-up spare but landed on Iwo Jima when all other aircraft in the flight continued on. The airplane was reassigned to crew C-12 (under Captain Captain Herman S. Zahn) immediately following the Nagasaki mission, who named the airplane Big Stink and had nose art applied.
Big Stink also flew 12 training and practice missions, and two combat missions to drop pumpkin bombs on industrial targets at Nagaoka and Hitachi, Japan, both flown by Classen and crew A-5. Big Stink was flown by more crews (nine of the 15) on operational missions than any other 393d Bombardment Squadron B-29.
In June 1959 it was moved into storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, and was dropped from the U.S. Air Force inventory in February 1960 as salvage.
Crew C-14 (normally assigned to Necessary Evil; 1st Lt. Norman Ray):[2]
Major James I. Hopkins, Jr., aircraft commander
2nd Lt. John E. Cantlon, co-pilot
2nd Lt. Stanley G. Steinke, navigator
509th Composite Group aircraft immediately before their bombing mission of Hiroshima. Left to right: Big Stink, The Great Artiste, and Enola Gay. Photo by Harold Agnew 19452nd Lt. Myron Faryna, bombardier
M/Sgt. George L. Brabenec, flight engineer
Sgt. Francis X. Dolan, radio operator
Cpl. Richard F. Cannon, radar operator
Sgt. Martin G. Murray, tail gunner
Sgt. Thomas A. Bunting, assistant engineer/scanner
^Operation Crossroads, the official pictorial record. The office of the historian, Joint Task Force One. New York: W.H. Wise & Co., inc. 1946. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.47294.
Campbell, Richard H., The Silverplate Bombers: A History and Registry of the Enola Gay and Other B-29s Configured to Carry Atomic Bombs (2005), ISBN0-7864-2139-8
