Straight Flush

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This article relates to the B-29 named Straight Flush. For the poker hand, see straight flush.

Straight Flush was the name of a B-29 Superfortress (B-29-36-MO 44-27301, victor number 85) 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 weather reconnaissance plane and flew over the city before the final bombing to determine if conditions were favorable for an attack. Pilot Claude Eatherly later expressed remorse, received psychiatric hospitalization, and engaged in anti-nuclear activism, and may be the origin of an urban legend that suggests that Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets (or other members of the crew) later went insane.

Straight Flush was one of the fifteen Silverplate B-29's used by the 509th in its deployment to Tinian. It was one of ten B-29s built at the Glenn L. Martin Company plant in Omaha, Nebraska, as a "block 35" B-29 but then designated "block 36" to denote its special configuration. It was flown from Omaha to the 509th's base at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, on April 2, 1945, and assigned to Eatherly and crew C-11, and departed Wendover June 8, 1945, arriving June 13.

On Tinian it was first assigned call sign Victor 5, later changed to Victor 85 to avoid misidentification when the 509th's aircraft were assigned the tail codes of other groups for security reasons. It was named Straight Flush, purportedly based on a gambling penchant of Eatherly, but its nose art was not applied until after the atomic bombing missions. From June to August it flew 11 training and practice bombing missions, and five combat missions in which "pumpkin bombs" were dropped on Japanese targets. One source (Campbell) states that on a Pumpkin mission on July 20, 1945, Eatherly attempted to bomb the Imperial Palace through overcast as a "target of opportunity" but missed, hitting a railroad station.

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. Straight Flush was re-configured as a TB-29 trainer in April 1950. In December 1953 it was placed in storage at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, and dropped from the Air Force inventory in July 1954.

Hiroshima mission crew:

Crew C-11 (regularly assigned to Straight Flush)

  • Major Claude R. Eatherly, Aircraft Commander
  • 2nd Lt. Ira J. Weatherly, Co-Pilot
  • Captain Francis D. Thornhill, Navigator
  • 2nd Lt. Franklin K. Wey, Bombardier
  • 2nd Lt. Eugene S. Grennen, Flight Engineer
  • S/Sgt. Pasquale Baldasaro, Radio Operator
  • Sgt. Albert G. Barsumian, Radar Operator
  • Sgt. Gillen T. Nicely, Tail Gunner
  • Sgt. Jack Bivans, Assistant Engineer/Scanner


Three FB-111A strategic bombers of the USAF 509th Bomb Wing, serials 68-0256, 69-6503, and 69-6512, carried the name and original nose art of Straight Flush on their nosewheel doors while based at Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire, in the 1970s and 1980s.

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