R. Nelson, 77; Enola Gay Radio Man

Richard Nelson, the radio operator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, has died. He was 77.

Nelson, a retired businessman, died Saturday at a Riverside hospital of complications from emphysema.

At 20, Nelson was the youngest of the 12 men aboard the Enola Gay, whose historic mission on Aug. 6, 1945, helped bring an early end to the war with Japan but ushered in a new, far more horrific type of warfare.

The Enola Gay, the propeller-driven four-engine bomber named after the mother of its pilot, Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., took off from the small Pacific island of Tinian at 2:45 a.m.

At 8:15 a.m., in clear skies high above Hiroshima, the Enola Gay’s bombardier released “Little Boy”: a 9,700-pound uranium bomb that had the destructive force of 20,000 pounds of TNT.

With its engines running at maximum power after dropping the bomb, the Enola Gay was about eight miles away at 8:16 a.m. when “Little Boy” detonated about 1,900 feet above the port city.

“Results excellent,” Nelson said in a two-word coded message that was forwarded to President Harry S. Truman.

Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another B-29 Superfortress dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, persuading the Japanese to surrender.

The bomb from the Enola Gay destroyed about five square miles of Hiroshima and instantly killed about 68,000 people. About 10,000 missing people were never found, 37,000 were injured and an untold number later developed disease from exposure to the deadly radiation.

But Nelson had no regrets and made no apologies for his role in dropping one of the two bombs that ended the war and which, military experts said, saved the lives of millions of Americans and Japanese who would have died in an Allied invasion.

“War is a terrible thing. It takes and it destroys,” Nelson told the Riverside Press-Enterprise on the 50th anniversary of the bombing. “Anyone feels sorry for people who are killed. We are all human beings. But I don’t feel sorry I participated in it. If I had known the results of the mission beforehand, I would have flown it anyway.

“There was no way in the world I would not have participated.”

Born in Moscow, Idaho, in 1925, Nelson moved to Los Angeles with his family when he was 4. He graduated from George Washington High School at 17 and, after six months at the University of Idaho, joined the Army Air Force in August 1943.

Nelson’s plans to become a pilot were dashed at the Santa Ana Army Air Base because of poor eyesight. Transferred to radio school in Iowa, he graduated near the top of his class.

He was assigned to the 509th Composite Group, a secret, handpicked group training for an undisclosed mission headed by Tibbets.

Once they were on Tinian, a small island in the Marianas chain, the Enola Gay crew flew practice missions over Japan.

“We knew this was a big mission, and we’d hear rumbles, but secrecy was really tight,” Nelson told the Press-Enterprise in 1999. “We knew this bomb was big, because we were training for a high-altitude mission that was completely different from any other bombing mission. The word atomic was never used.”

Navigator Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, who, along with Tibbets and weaponeer Morris Jeppson are the only surviving Enola Gay crew members, recalled Wednesday that he had been concerned about the lack of combat experience of Nelson and other crew members.

Van Kirk said that he, Tibbets and the bombardier, Maj. Thomas F. Ferebee, had flown together out of England and in Africa and “we wondered about flying with all these new people.”

But, he said, “shortly after we had taken off from Tinian, I looked over at Dick and he was sitting there reading a paperback book. I thought, ‘Here was one of them that’s not going to get very excited.’ He was very calm, very positive, had his eye on the ball.”

Nelson later recalled that he heard no noise when the bomb was detonated, but he felt twin jolts from shock waves. The flash from the bomb, he said, was visible from six miles high.

After his discharge, Nelson majored in business administration at USC and became a salesman in Arizona for the Imperial Brass Co., a job that took him to Chicago, where he met his wife, Nancy, and later to Boston.

Returning to California in 1962, Nelson worked in industrial sales until retiring in 1986. He and his wife, who had lived in Palos Verdes Estates, bought a 20-acre orange grove in Riverside in 1976.

In addition to his wife of 49 years, Nelson is survived by two daughters, Lorri Orsaba of Miramonte, Calif., and Susan Nelson of Whittier; a sister, Loraine Russell of Atascadero, Calif.; a brother, Gene Nelson of Santa Maria, Calif.; and four grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Feb. 15 at Acheson and Graham Garden of Prayer, 7944 Magnolia Ave., Riverside.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to the American Lung Assn. of Inland Counties, 441 MacKay Drive, San Bernardino, CA 92408.