This story appeared in todays local paper. I'll refrane from commenting oin the total absurdity of this. But...........feel free.
EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY
Vet disputes A-bomb legend
Salem's Bruce Banks does not think the Enola Gay carried the huge weapon
CAPI LYNN
Statesman Journal
August 6, 2005
Bruce Banks knows what the history books say. The Enola Gay took off from Tinian Island 60 years ago today and dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima, Japan.
But he disputes the B-29's role in the mission.
Banks, 80, served at Tinian as a corporal in the Marine Corps. He was one of the first to arrive at the U.S. air base and one of the last to leave.
He says he stood beside the bomb the day it was unloaded and swears that there is no way it would fit in a B-29. He also thinks that one of the two larger aircraft that accompanied the Enola Gay that historic day must have transported the bomb, with the Enola Gay simply acting as a guide.
"I have mentioned my views and observations to a number of people," said Banks, who lives on the outskirts of West Salem, "and it upsets them something fierce and they think I'm sort of a nut."
Robert Heisler has doubts about his friend's theory. They have had many discussions during their weekly pinochle games, and Heisler has written several letters, including one to the television program 60 Minutes, in hopes of prompting some sort of investigation.
There have been no replies.
"Bruce refutes what happened," said Heisler, who was in Europe serving with the Army during the war. "He was there. He's got more inside dope than I do.
"I would just like to know what did happen."
Historians do not back Banks' assertion.
"I have never heard such a tale before," said Dr. James C. Bradford, an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University who edited "Atlas of American Military History."
Banks has never wavered from his convictions, and his family has been supportive of his alternate view.
"He saw what he saw, I'm sure," his wife, Helen, said.
Banks was drafted in 1943, and chose the Marine Corps. With his background as a journeyman machinist at a shipyard, the Marines were eager to make him a mechanic for the 17th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion.
He landed at Tinian on July 24, 1944. His job gave him access to a jeep and freedom to roam the island.
"I was a curious young punk," Banks said.
He said he just happened to be on the airfield the day the bomb arrived that following summer. He was among a group of about 20 servicemen who had gathered after it was unloaded.
"We didn't know it was an atomic bomb," Banks said. "It was just a great big bomb.
"We all wondered, 'What the hell are they going to do with it?'"
He stood beside the egg-shaped explosive, raising his arm above his head to get an idea just how big it was.
"I can reach 7 feet, and I was a minimum 6 inches too short to reach the height," Banks said. "I estimated it was 10 feet long.
"The bomb was too big to go in any B-29. The aircraft was just not made for anything that big."
According to National Air and Space Museum archives at the Smithsonian Institution, several B-29s were specially designed for the secret mission.
Code-named "Silverplate," the aircraft were modified by deleting all gun turrets except for the tail position, removing armor plate, installing electric propellers and configuring the bomb bay to accommodate the device.
The museum's archives list specifications of the Enola Gay, but no measurements of the bomb-bay doors are given.
Banks said soon after the bomb arrived at Tinian, Navy Seabees dug a pit and installed two hydraulic hoists. The bomb later was hauled out and lowered into the pit. Within a week or so, two white aircraft arrived. He hadn't seen anything like them, and assumed they were British.
"They had only one bomb bay and four engines -- much larger than a B-29," Banks said.
"I saw them back the big aircraft over the pit and shove the bomb in it and close the bomb bay doors, then open it and put the bomb back."
He said observed this from about 150 yards away.
Banks wasn't an eyewitness when Col. Paul Tibbets and his crew took off Aug. 6, 1945, on their way to Hiroshima.
"I maintain the only thing the Enola Gay did was show the other aircraft where to go," Banks said. "It's just too big a bomb to fit in a B-29.
"It's not a figment of my imagination. It's what I saw."
Banks got out of the Marines after serving four years, and went on to have a family and work 37 years as a switchman for Southern Pacific Railroad.
It was years after the war when he began to question, in his mind, what unfolded that summer six decades ago.
"I could not understand why we were covering, why we were telling this story," he said. "There had to be more people than just me that were aware of the size of that bomb.
"Some of them could have been sworn to secrecy, but I wasn't in on it. I wasn't even supposed to be there."
Sixty years later, Heisler would love to be able prove his friend right. He has even thought about writing to the British government and Royal Air Force.
"If their plane actually did drop that bomb, why are they letting the U.S. and Enola Gay get all the credit?" Heisler said. "It seems like this went on awfully long if this isn't what happened.
"Wouldn't this drop a bombshell, so to speak, on the whole thing?"
clynn@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6710
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. Geeze what people will come up with. Note the A-Bomb "Little Boy" in the pit covered by a tarp.
