Necessary Evil
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Necessary Evil was the name of a B-29 Superfortress (B-29-45-MO 44-86291, victor number 91) participating in the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
Assigned to the 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group, it was used as a camera plane to photograph the explosion and effects of the bomb, and to carry scientific observers. At the time of the attack the plane was not named and was known only by its victor number. The mission was flown by crew B-10, Captain George Marquardt aircraft commander.
The crew regularly assigned to this airplane in turn flew another on the Nagasaki mission on August 9, 1945, the B-29 Big Stink, though without their aircraft commander, who was ill.
Built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Plant at Omaha, Nebraska, Necessary Evil was accepted by the Army Air Forces on May 18, 1945, and flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, by its assigned crew C-14 (Capt. Norman W. Ray, Aircraft Commander) in June. It departed Wendover for Tinian on June 27 and arrived on July 2. There it was assigned victor number 11, but that was changed for security reasons to victor 91 on August 1. It was named and had its nose art painted after the Nagasaki mission.
After World War II it served with the 509th until 1949, when it was transferred to the 97th Bomb Wing at Biggs Air Force Base, Texas. Necessary Evil was re-configured as a TB-29 trainer in April 1950 and was dropped from the Air Force inventory in November 1956. It was transferred to the U.S. Navy and used as a target at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, California.
Hiroshima mission crew: Crew B-10 (normally assigned to Up An' Atom)
- Capt. George W. Marquardt, Aircraft Commander
- 2nd Lt. James M. Anderson, Co-Pilot
- 2nd Lt. Russell Gackenbach, Navigator
- Capt. James W. Strudwick, Bombardier
- T/Sgt. James R. Corliss, Flight Engineer
- Sgt. Warren L. Coble, Radio Operator
- Sgt. Joseph M. DiJulio, Radar Operator
- Sgt. Melvin H. Bierman, Tail Gunner
- Sgt. Anthony D. Capua, Jr., Assistant Engineer/Scanner
- (Civilian) Bernard Waldman, Project Alberta, camera operator
Two FB-111A strategic bombers of the USAF 509th Bomb Wing, serials 67-7194 and 68-0259, carried the name and original nose art of Necessary Evil on their nosewheel doors while based at Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire, in the 1970s and 1980s.
[edit] Sources
- Campbell, Richard H., The Silverplate Bombers: A History and Registry of the Enola Gay and Other B-29s Configured to Carry Atomic Bombs (2005), ISBN 0-7864-2139-8
- Manhattan Project 509CG Page
