My True Course: Dutch Van Kirk Northumberland to Hiroshima

The Military Writer's Society of America 2013 Silver Medal for Biography

He looked like the boy next door, a Depression-era kid. The now ninety-year-old gentleman with a remarkable memory and a sharp wit became in 2011 the only living crewman from the Silverplate Boeing B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.
   A debate continued for more than half a century with his former commanding officer, Paul Tibbets, until his death about how Dutch Van Kirk came to navigate the Enola Gay from Tinian to Hiroshima. The answer is part of Dutch's biographical chronicle.
   The navigator of the Enola Gay's biography is an authentic "greatest generation" story told through his unedited letters to and from home, Van Kirk's vignettes from his Army Air Corps training through Europe, Africa, and the Pacific to the first atomic strike in history.