War Hero Morris Jeppson Dies: Enola Gay Crewman Who Armed Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japs

Our hearts and prayers should go out to Jeppson and his family. He was a true war hero who at age 23 armed the Atomic Bomb inside the Enola Gay when they approached the target city of Hiroshima which the result was tens of thousands of dead Japs possibly saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of servicemen including my father (R.I.P. Dad) who was prepared to invade Japan if it came to it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...040604104.html

Morris R. Jeppson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




Lt. Jeppson, pictured before his first and only combat mission. (National Museum Of Nuclear Science And History)

Morris R. Jeppson, 87, one of two weaponeers who armed the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, prompting the surrender of Japanese troops and the end of World War II, died March 30 at a hospital in Las Vegas. His family could not provide a specific cause of death but said he had been hospitalized for back pain and a severe headache.
Known as "Dick," Mr. Jeppson was a 23-year-old Army Air Forces second lieutenant when he boarded the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, for what would be his first and only combat mission.
It was the wee hours of the morning on Aug. 6, 1945, and "Little Boy," the bomb that would introduce the world to nuclear warfare, lay in the plane's belly in safe mode. It had to be armed in flight en route to its target to avoid accidental detonation during takeoff.


More in links.

 

bump for respect.

 

The Enola Gay ... named for Paul Tibbitts mother. The Manhattan Project was huge ... bits and pieces spread out across the US. Everybody knew something was going on, but not what. Oak Ridge, TN, not far from where I live is still called "The Secret City" ... it was so classified at the time that it was not even shown on maps. Still very much operational today and still well guarded. Seems like everyone there has an ID badge and/or a weapon of one kind or another at the ready.

Great museum there about the atomic bomb and related matters.

 

So playing your part in the massacring of the Japanese people makes you a war hero? Sounds more like a war criminal to me.

 

Hey, the Japs drew first blood when they attacked Pearl Harbor. We just ended it with the bomb vaporizing tens of thousands of the treacherous Japs.

 

War criminal? How so?

You don't actually believe that peace was going to be achieved in the near future do you? Japan was barely ready to give up AFTER the second bomb was dropped. We would of had to go in, and in the process not only would millions of soldiers on each side had been lost but millions of innocent civilians.

PLUS, Japan would of been turned into rubble.

 

Yes, I'm sure their dictatorial government took a vote among those innocent civilians as to whether they should attack Pearl Harbor. How treacherous of them.

 

Actually it's pretty clear they were reaching out to the Soviet Union to end the fighting before the bombs were dropped, and our intelligence knew this.

 

Kennedy wishes we could have had a few hundred thousand more americans killed to fit his utopian model.