'We were not told anything about the cloud, just don't go through it.'Īs they made their final approach to Hiroshima, they were flying 30,000 feet over the city. 'We were told that once the explosion occurred, we should not look directly at it, that we should not go through the cloud,' he says. Gackenbach was part of the 10-man crew that flew on the Necessary Evil. 'We were only told what we needed to know, and keep your mouth shut.' 'I never heard the words 'atomic bomb,' ' he tells Radio Diaries. The Enola Gay carried the weapon, nicknamed 'Little Boy.' It weighed nearly 10,000 pounds and could produce an explosive force equal to an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT.īut at the time, Gackenbach didn't know any of this.

They had different engines, fewer guns and a larger bomb bay. Their planes were reconfigured B-29 Superfortress bombers.