Tom Van Kirk said he and his siblings are fortunate to have had such a wonderful father who remained active until the end of his life. "You have to understand the Japan we fought was significantly different from the Japan in later years," he said. Boy, even though it was 12 feet long and weighed more than 9,000 pounds. In a 2010 interview with WXIA, Van Kirk said he had no second thoughts about his part in the historic event. The bomb was dropped by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay piloted by. Van Kirk was the navigator aboard the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb called "Little Boy" on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. Little Boy was the codename for the type of atomic bomb dropped on the. Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk died of natural causes Monday at a retirement home where he lived in Stone Mountain, The Associated Press reported, citing his son Tom Van Kirk. MK1 was long 3 m and 4 ton weight: between 70 and 80,000. Watch Video: Enola Gay navigator never thought he'd live so longĪTLANTA - The last surviving crew member of the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan during World War II has died. Enola Gay airplane launched Little Boy, the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.