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Field Order #13

Special Bombing Mission #13
Hiroshima August 6, 1945

"There are those who considered that the atomic bomb should never have been used at all .... that rather than throw this bomb we should have sacrificed a million Americans and a quarter of a million British in the desperate battles and massacres of an invasion of Japan.
The bomb brought peace, but man alone can keep that peace."
-Winston Churchill, August 16, 1945

In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, members of the 509th Composite Group culminated a year of top secret training as the Enola Gay took off from Tinian under the command of Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. At 8:16 a.m., the crew carried out their top-secret mission by dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the seventh largest city in Japan. Sixty percent of the city was destroyed, with an estimated 80,000 casualties. The Japanese government had already ignored the inevitable by refusing to heed the Potsdam Ultimatum, and conflict within the government continued to delay surrender. With American casualties in the Pacific Theater numbering 900 per day and faced with an estimated 500,000 casualties in a proposed invasion of Japan, U.S. leaders decided Japanese surrender must be hastened. Members of the 509th were called upon to fly a second mission, this one on August 9, 1945, under the command of Major Charles Sweeney. With the primary target, Kokura Arsenal, obscured by smoke, the crew of Bockscar dropped a second atomic bomb on the secondary target, the industrial city of Nagasaki. More than 40,000 people were killed. The Japanese surrendered on August 11.

As a member of the 509th, I was participant in this history changing mission. In fact I had a front row seat for the first mission as commander of the Necessary Evil, an observation plane. It was a long way from a peaceful college classroom in Illinois to this extraordinary vantage point as a participant in the most important mission in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

I spent by boyhood days in Golconda, IL. When I graduated from Golconda High, I had several scholarships. I chose Illinois Wesleyan University, where I had baseball and basketball scholarships. My sister Vera had a teaching job there. I attended college 3 1/2 years, but in 1940 during the last semester of my senior year , I decided to join the Air Corps. I had my pilot's license, and I signed a contract with the Air Corps that would earn me $500 for every year I stayed in.

As a cadet in the Air Corps, I attended Brooks Air College in Tulsa, OK, for six months. I received basic training at Randolph Field and advanced training at Kelly Field in San Antonio, TX. During my training at Kelly Field, I had an instructor named Lt. John "Jack" Ryan. He later became a four-star general commanding the Air Force in 1968-69.

One night at Kelly Field, Harold Shull and I had just returned from flying about 1:00 A.M. when we received a call on the radio: "Marquardt and Shull report to Jack Ryan." He "wracked us back" (made us stand at attention) because we hadn't parked our plane correctly. He gave each of us a gunnysack and ordered us to fill them with unbroken clay pigeons from the Kelly field skeet range. When we returned at 4:00 A.M., Jack was still waiting for us. "So next time I tell you to do something, you'd better do it right," he said.

I received my wings at Kelly Field after four months. As a 2nd Lieutenant, I was assigned to an engineering school at Rice University in Houston, TX. I took aerodynamics classes, worked on airplanes and graduated in six months. I was

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assigned to Midland, TX, in charge of 30 airplanes at a bombardiering school for AT-11 (a twin engine aircraft with a bomb bay). We had to keep as many planes in the air as we could. Harold Shull was also in charge of 30 planes. We got so sick of the job that we would purposely make mistakes on out report. General Davies called us into his office and asked us what was wrong. Later, when we got to know him better we told him that we made mistakes on purpose - "so we could get out of this damned place. We want to go to war!"

Finally I was re-assigned to Del Rio, TX, where I was an instructor for one year for pilots scheduled to fly B-26 for missions in England. We had an obstacle course where a bunch of officers crawled under the steel angles and beams of a bridge 100 feet over the Rio Grande River. The incentive was "free drinks" once we got to Mexico on the other side. Jim Roberts, our commanding officer, wanted to join us on the obstacle course. He missed the beam with on of his hands and fell 100 feet into the shallow water of the Rio Grand, breaking his back. That ended the obstacle course.

Next I was stationed in the Caribbean for eight months for submarine patrol, flying B-25's. I was stationed in Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and St. Lucia Islands and then returned to the States. The B-25 was a pile of junk compared to the B-26, which I enjoyed flying. I checked out in B-24's, B-17's and B-29's. In November 1943, we were assigned to the 393rd squadron of the 504th Group in Fairmont, NE, flying B-29's. We completed Air Corps requirements for a 2nd Air Force assignment to go overseas. The 393rd Squadron was pulled out of the 504th Bomb Group and went to Wendover, Utah, in September 1944.

In Wendover, I found out I was assigned to the 509th Composite Group under the command of Col. Paul W. Tibbets. At a meeting, Col. Tibbets told us that what we were doing could shorten the war. We were all given a ten-day leave and told to be ready to go to work when we returned.

It was at this time I met my future wife, Bernece. She was private secretary to the owner of the Newhouse Hotel in Salt Lake City. Some of us stayed there on weekends and I had noticed her in her office which was located in the lobby. Buck and I asked her to type some orders for us to go on leave. She referred us to the public stenographer in the lobby. After finding her busy, we persuaded Bernece to type them for us. After my leave and my return to Wendover, we began to date.

While stationed in Wendover, we were sent to Cuba for additional training in January and February of 1945. We made dry runs over New York and Boston. One night John Wilson, Buck Eatherly and I went into Havana to gamble. Buck was losing heavily. The casino would not accept his check, so he told them to call his banker in Texas. Unbeknownst to them, he had a friend in Texas pose as his banker and OK the check. We had returned to the States when the check bounced. The base commander in Cuba notified Col. Tibbets, and he took care of it to avoid any adverse publicity about the squadron. We didn't find out about this until our Philadelphia reunion in 1986. While in Wendover, we did some night bombing. Charles McKnight did a dry run over San Francisco. When he got to 30,000 feet, he began his bombing run. We had replaced the gun turrets with blisters, and the blister blew out. Luckily, the crew had their seat belts on. Everything loose came out of the hold. He immediately went to a lower altitude.

"After the 393rd Bombing Squadron returned to Wendover from the Caribbean, its training continued. The fliers gained much valuable experience in ballistic testing of dummy bombs called "pumpkins" similar in dimensions and weight to the atomic