Before the mission to Hiroshima, the young navigator flew 58 missions over Germany and Africa before returning to the United States in June 1943 for navigational training. 27, 1921 in Northumberland, Pa., Van Kirk joined the Army Air Corps in October of 1941 and was assigned to fly B-17s out of England. 'We had over three million men waiting to invade Japan that wanted to go home and we wanted to go home. 'That mission saved countless lives on both side of the conflict,' he added. 'I had a job to do and I did it,' stated Van Kirk. Van Kirk signed more than 300 copies of The 509th Remembered, by Robert and Amelia Krauss, at Homer Helter's Military Antique Store on Shirley Street, the 85-year-old war hero and sole remaining crew member of that flight had no regrets about his mission. 6, 1945, effectively ending World War II. 'It was the easiest mission I'd ever flown in my whole life,' said Theodore 'Dutch' Van Kirk, navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Ug.
