War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission

The author recounts his World War II encounters with Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the revolutionary B-29 bomber who would eventually select him to lead the atomic mission to Nagasaki.

Plainspoken reminiscences from the only man to fly both of the missions that dropped atomic bombs on Japan, bringing WW II to a close. A love of flying took Sweeney from his boyhood home in suburban Boston into the US Army as an air cadet well before Pearl Harbor. After winning his wings and a commission on December 12, 1941, he bounced about stateside commands until the fall of 1943. Desperate to secure an overseas assignment, the 23-year-old captain talked Lt. Colonel Paul Tibbets into giving him a billet with the 509th Composite Group. The 509th had been chosen to use the incredibly destructive weapons developed by the Manhattan Project against Japan. Following an intensive training regimen at well- guarded bases in remote areas of America's vast Southwest, Sweeney and his comrades-in-aerial-arms arrived on Tinian in mid-1945. By now a major, he piloted the instrumentation plane that recorded the effects when Tibbets conducted a picture-perfect strike that decimated Hiroshima on August 6. Three days later, Sweeney led the unescorted superfortress flight that laid waste to Nagasaki. While history's first A-bomb assault went like clockwork, the author and his crew had to overcome problems with their plutonium device, fuel shortages, and a host of other difficulties. Shortly after Japan's surrender, he was able to get a first-hand look at the ruins of Nagasaki. While the experience left him hopeful that humankind will never again engage in nuclear warfare, Sweeney (a devout Catholic) has no regrets for the role he played in bringing a cruel and costly global conflict to a decisive end. Nor does the retired major general have much patience with revisionists who give Japan victim status for the devastation it suffered. Eloquent, engrossing testimony of an old-fashioned patriot at peace with his consequential place in military and world history. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

General (then Major) Sweeney was the pilot of Bock's Car, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Like its target, the second atomic mission has never received a fraction of the attention given its predecessor, targeted at Hiroshima. This book begins to answer that situation. Sweeney, a Boston Irishman learning to fly at the time of Pearl Harbor, became acquainted with Paul Tibbetts, pilot of the Hiroshima mission, during test-pilot work on the B-29. Picked for the 509th Bombardment Wing, Sweeney eventually executed his mission, despite human error, mechanical failures, bad weather, fuel shortages, and a bomb that had to be armed before takeoff. Much of this account adopts a tone of moral outrage over the current historical revisionism concerning the A-bomb. It reflects the consciousness in 1945 of ever-lengthening American casualty lists because of stubborn Japanese resistance that was expected to continue indefinitely. The revisionists may have a case, but Sweeney has one, too. Roland Green

Sweeney, the only person to fly both atomic bomb missions over Japan in 1945, wrote this account because "I [felt] outraged and betrayed when...our national museum, the Smithsonian exhibition,...attempted to change the history of the war." The Smithsonian exhibition initially questioned whether dropping of the bomb was justified. Sweeney starts off with a clumsy attempt to advertise himself, then partially succeeds in cultivating the excitement of "insider" knowledge of specific events, places, and times. Because Sweeney claims to have "hitched his star" to Col. Paul Tibbets, the mission commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, this volume serves to raise his visibility as second in command. He does not forcefully support his thesis of "righting a wrong" until the last chapter and appendix (involving testimony before a Senate committee). Ultimately, this book offers little new or startling information. Recommended only for pertinent collections.?Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. Sys., Iola
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.