Charles Sweeney
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Brigadier General Charles W. Sweeney (1919 - July 15, 2004) was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and the pilot who flew the "Fat Man" atomic bomb to Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and began flying while attending North Quincy High School. After graduation in 1937 he attended classes at Boston University and Purdue University, then joined the U.S. Army Air Corps on April 28, 1941, as an aviation cadet. After receiving his pilot wings and a commission as a second lieutenant, Sweeney trained for two years at the Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana.
Sweeney served as an operations officer and a test pilot at Eglin Field, Florida. In 1944 he was promoted to major and assigned as a B-29 pilot instructor at Grand Island, Nebraska. He then trained in the atomic missions training project, Project Alberta, at Wendover Field, Utah, and was named commander of the 320th Troop Carrier Squadron, a C-54 transport unit in the 509th Composite Group, on January 6, 1945. On May 4, 1945 Sweeney became commander of the 393rd Bomb Squadron, and in June moved his unit to North Field on Tinian in the Mariana Islands.
On August 9, 1945, three days after he had flown the instrumentation support plane for the attack on Hiroshima, Major Sweeney piloted Bockscar, the B-29 that dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. Having diverted from the primary target, Kokura, because of weather conditions, Bockscar dropped a plutonium weapon with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. Approximately 70,000 people were killed in the initial explosion and 60% of Nagasaki destroyed. Japan surrendered six days after the bombing.
In November 1945, Sweeney returned with the 509th Composite Group to Roswell Army Air Base in New Mexico to train aircrews for the atomic testing mission, Operation Crossroads. Sweeney left active duty with the rank of lieutenant colonel on June 28, 1946, but remained active with the Massachusetts Air National Guard. On February 21, 1956, Col. Sweeney was named commander of its 102nd Air Defense Wing and shortly after, on April 6, was promoted to brigadier general. He retired in 1976.
Throughout his life Sweeney remained convinced of the appropriateness and necessity of the bombing, and wrote War's End: An Eyewitness Account of America's Last Atomic Mission to defend the action in light of subsequent historical questioning. He also appeared in the 1970's television series "World At War" and was seen explaining the build up to the mission raids.
In his later years Charles Sweeney performed in various air shows doing many maneuvers to awe crowds. Sweeney died at age 84 on July 15, 2004 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
A short documentary featuring an audio recording of Sweeney describing the Nagasaki mission preparation and execution called "Nagasaki: The Commander's Voice" was made in 2005. The audio recording, from 2002, was the last one made before his death.
