Last Hiroshima bomb crew survivor Theodore VanKirk dies at 93

The last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, hastening the end of the second world war and forcing the world into the atomic age, has died in the southern United States.

Theodore VanKirk, also known as "Dutch", died of natural causes at a retirement home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, his son Tom VanKirk said. He was 93.

VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history. He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets' fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No 13.

The mission went perfectly, VanKirk said in a 2005 interview. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. As the 4,080kg bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" fell towards the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives.

They didn't know whether the bomb would actually work and, if it did, whether its shockwaves would rip their plane to shreds. They counted - one thousand one, one thousand two - reaching the 43 seconds they'd been told it would take for detonation and heard nothing.

"I think everybody in the plane concluded it was a dud. It seemed a lot longer than 43 seconds," VanKirk (inset) recalled.