Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 6, 1993 TAG: 9308060008
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The bomb-bay doors sprung open beneath a B-29 bomber and a 5,000-pound bomb - Little Boy #1 - dropped out, seemed to hover for a moment and then nose-dived toward Hiroshima, Japan.
Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot, veered the plane toward the south to fly back to the landing strip hundreds of miles away, near Guam. Beside him sat Capt. Bob Lewis, the co-pilot.
Long seconds passed with no report, and the crew of the Enola Gay thought the bomb had been a dud.
Suddenly, though, a white flash burst over the city. It rocked the Enola Gay and rose in a vast dust and smoke mushroom.
Think of the Roanoke Valley. Put four pins in your map - at Oakland Elementary School and at Roanoke Memorial Hospital; at the Grandin Theater and at the heart of downtown Vinton.
Now level every building within that circle.
That's what happened to Hiroshima: Five square miles were wiped out in a matter of seconds; 78,100 people died; 51,000 more were maimed or never found.
The plane's crew members continued their mechanical chores, but each was stunned by the ferocity of the blast that would end World War II within the week.
What did Tibbets and Lewis, pilot and co-pilot, stare at?
\ He drives a train for Norfolk Southern Corp., but it's not a piece of railroad memorabilia that Jim Eagon cradles in his hand and strokes.
It's a plastic half-dome, about the size of half of a big orange.
In gold leaf, inside, the printing is simple: "B-29," it says on the plastic. "Boeing."
Twenty years ago, when Eagon was running locomotives in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, he befriended an older man.
John was a signalman on the railroad.
When he learned of Eagon's passion for aviation, he brought him a gift one day, handing him the plastic half-dome that Eagon cradled on Thursday.
John, a World War II veteran and a member of the Enola Gay's ground crew, said it was the centerpiece of the B-29's steering wheel. It's the airplane equivalent of the horn cover at the center of an older car's steering wheel.
John told Jim Eagon that ground crew members knew the Enola Gay had been on a historic mission; and when it returned to Tinian a small island near Guam, after the bombing, he'd hopped up and pried himself a souvenir.
By 1973, it was time to pass it on.
"I wouldn't doubt his word," says Eagon, looking down at the relic. "Why should I? Why would he fabricate something like that?"
The little plastic gadget from the Enola Gay is priceless.
The bomber is being restored now by the Smithsonian Institution, in a hangar just outside Washington, D.C. It's supposed to be finished in time for the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A lot of pieces are missing. A member of the restoration crew says it is entirely possible that Jim Eagon has a piece.
"It gives me chills, still, just to hold it," he says.
by CNB