Later Widowsky was assigned to the 509th Composite crew in Fairmount, Neb., with whom he remained until the end of the war. “I pounded up and down that boardwalk and did calisthenics on that beach for months.”Įventually he was sent to navigation school in Monroe, La., and to air gunnery school in Fort Myers, Fla. “The military had taken over all the hotels,” he said. He was sent to Atlantic City for basic training. He preempted the draft by enlisting in the Army Air Corps in 1942, hoping to be a navigator. He said that after graduating from Newark’s Weequahic High School, he worked for his uncle’s candy business and as a meter calibrator.
“At every show there was at least one person.” “Many, many times someone would come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for saving the life of my brother,’ ‘Thank you for saving my father,’ ‘my friend who didn’t have to invade,’” said Widowsky. Audience members who had family or friends who would have been part of the Japanese invasion inevitably sought him out. Widowsky’s conviction was strengthened during his many appearances at air shows over the years. Noting that at the time the United States was preparing for a full-scale ground invasion of Japan that would have undoubtedly resulted in significant casualties, Widowsky said, “A lot of people objected to our dropping the atomic bomb even Gen. “I feel we did the right thing because it saved thousands of American lives,” he said. He said that the original target for the second bomb was to be the Japanese town of Kokura, “but there was cloud cover, so we went to the next target, Nagasaki, but we did the job.”ĭespite the immeasurable bloodshed that followed - according to CNN, 150,000 people were killed instantly, but many thousands more died later from radiation poisoning - Widowsky said he is proud of his role in a pivotal moment of 20th-century history, and has no regrets about introducing nuclear weapons to the world. The bombs, he said, were so heavy they had to be loaded by hydraulic lift from a pit below the aircraft, and armed guards were everywhere. The dramatic events of those days are firmly ingrained in Widowsky’s still-alert mind. He was assigned to the 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group. Widowsky served as navigator on the Big Stink and the Laggin Dragon, the advance weather reconnaissance plane for BocksCar, which dropped the Nagasaki bomb. “Paul Tibbets told us it was something that will end the war as soon as possible.” “We didn’t know what was happening, but we knew it was something special,” said Widowsky. 14 to hear from the last surviving member of the mission. The Newark native and retired auto salesman lived in Hillside and then for 47 years in Union before coming to live at Stein eight months ago with his wife of 71 years, Florence.ĭressed in his original Air Force uniform, Widowsky spoke to members of the men’s club of Temple Beth El of Somerset who came to the Stein residence on Jan.
“I didn’t even know what an atomic bomb was,” admitted Widowsky, 95, a resident of The Martin and Edith Stein Assisted Living Residence on the Oscar and Ella Wilf Campus for Senior Living in Somerset. Get New Jersey Jewish News's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories The level of secrecy for the mission was so high that only Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, was privy to its details. Widowsky and his squadron returned to the skies to aid in the launch of the second bomb, over Nagasaki, which led to Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II. The Big Stink was the back-up plane for the Enola Gay, which had dropped the first of two atomic bombs.