A GOOD WARRIOR:

Charles Sweeney, Pilot Who Dropped Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki, Dies at 84 (RICHARD GOLDSTEIN, 7/19/04, NY Times)

Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney, who flew the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the second atomic strike on Japan in the final days of World War II, died Friday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. General Sweeney, who lived in Milton, Mass., was 84.

The cause was pulmonary complications of congestive heart disease, his son-in-law Brian Howe said.

Having the rank of major in the Army Air Forces at the time, he flew his bomber, the Great Artiste, to Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, accompanying the Enola Gay, piloted by Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. When the Enola Gay dropped its uranium bomb on the city, unleashing the power of atomic energy for the first time as a weapon of war, the Great Artiste dropped measuring instruments.

On Aug. 9, Major Sweeney piloted the Bockscar, carrying a plutonium bomb even more powerful than the Enola Gay's bomb. At 11:01 a.m., the bomb was dropped on the industrial city of Nagasaki, killing and wounding tens of thousands, heavily damaging a steelworks and arms plant and demolishing thousands of residential buildings, according to an American bombing survey.

As Major Sweeney turned his plane to escape the blast, he saw a multicolor cloud "rising faster than at Hiroshima."

"It seemed more intense, more angry," he remembered in his autobiography. "It was a mesmerizing sight, at once breathtaking and ominous."

The Nagasaki attack proved harrowing for the crew. A mechanical failure reduced the fuel supply, and both the primary target, the city of Kokura, and the secondary target, Nagasaki, were obscured from the air. Major Sweeney landed on Okinawa with only a minute or so of fuel remaining.

Six days later, Japan surrendered, bringing World War II to an end.