He said he took the photograph knowing what an important event in history these men represented. Tibbets once called Ferebee ‘the best bombardier who ever looked through the eyepiece of a Norden bomb sight.’ Harrison’s time stamp on his photo for when the film was developed was 1992, but Post files show the event to have occurred in 1991.
Ferebee died at age 81 on March 16, 2000, in Windermere, Fla.
Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, navigator for the Enola Gay Ferebee, who retired from the U.S. Joining him that day were three of his best friends, including two fellow members of the Enola Gay crew. Ferebee was the bombardier on the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, Aug. Enola Gay reported clear skies over Kokura, but by the time Bockscar arrived, the city was obscured by smoke from fires from the conventional bombing of Yahata by 224 B-29s the day before. David Harrison submitted this photograph he took in Mocksville on May 27, 1991, when several hundred Davie Countians gathered in Mocksville to honor their native son Thomas Ferebee with a short parade at town square and the dedication of a historical marker on U.S. Enola Gay, flown by Captain George Marquardt’s Crew B-10, was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura, the primary target.
