Major Theodore Van Kirk obituary

At 2.45am local time on 6 August 1945, Theodore Van Kirk, who has died aged 93, recorded in his logbook the take-off of the Boeing B29 Enola Gay from its base on Tinian in the Mariana islands of the western Pacific.

In the previous year, the US had made Tinian, 6,000 miles west of San Francisco, the largest airport in the world. That night the Enola Gay's commander, Colonel Paul Tibbets, was piloting a 65-ton plane carrying 7,000 gallons of aviation fuel and a four and a half ton bomb. The bomber struggled into the air just 100 feet (30 metres) short of the end of the two-mile runway, 1,500 miles from Japan.