Van Kirk, a spry 89, confirms what his aircraft commander, Paul Tibbetts, had told me a dozen years earlier, that there was a third atomic bomb. On a sunny Saturday afternoon last year, the crowd is particularly thick in front of two Doolittle Raiders and Jake "McNasty" McNiece, of the 101st Airborne's Filthy 13, the original "Dirty Dozen." So I make a beeline for Northumberland, Pa., native Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, the navigator and last surviving crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. So do the weekend's 50 or so "special guests" - men and women who participated in some of the war's pivotal moments. The aircraft and the reenactors give me a feel for what service was like for my father, a first lieutenant in the 20th Air Force. For a hefty fee, you can even go for a short ride in a Boeing Stearman or North American SNJ trainer, or on a half-hour bombing raid over Hamburg (Pennsylvania, that is) in a B-17 Flying Fortress.
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On the flight line, you can look over 35 vintage Allied and Axis aircraft before they take to the skies for the twice-daily air show. Since 1991, history buffs, military enthusiasts, and nostalgia seekers have congregated at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum for what is billed as "the biggest, best, and most comprehensive commemoration of World War II and the Greatest Generation in the country." This year's event, scheduled for June 3-5, is expected to draw more than 20,000.Įach day, 1,000 authentically outfitted and equipped reenactors man their stations in seven "encampments." Most prominent are those depicting the European and Pacific Theaters, but there is also a French village still in the hands of the Wehrmacht, with skirmishes occasionally breaking out, and the Great American Homefront, which re-creates life Stateside in the war years. "įinally, FDR, played by Delmas Wood, arrives in his blue 1936 Ford Phaeton, delivers the speech that signaled America's entry into war after the attack on Pearl Harbor - and then the music and dancing resume at Reading's annual WWII Weekend.
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Nor does it matter that everyone already knows those words - or at least the first 11 of them - by heart: "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy. After all, the feature attraction of the evening, the big-band USO show, can't resume until he says a few words.
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READING - The president is running late, and the crowd - a courteous mixture of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians assembled on the tarmac in front of the hangar - is getting restless.