Talk:John P. Merrill

Enola Gay flight surgeon

User:Atomicjohn has challenged the statement about Merrill being the flight surgeon on the Enola Gay. See diff. His comment was posted in the article itself and has now been removed. I have posted a message on Atomicjohn's Talk page to alert him to removal of his comment and invite him to make suggestions and comments about Wikipedia articles on the article's Talk page.
Anyone with access to the cited source for the information about Merrill being the flight surgeon on Enola Gay should check to see what is stated in the article, what is stated by Atomicjohn, and which is the better view to be expressed in this article. Dolphin (t) 02:48, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Please excuse me, but I am new to the procedures on how to post comments on Wiki. My Little Boy and Fat Man drawings have been the drawings-of-record on Wiki for several years.

This entire statement that appeared in his 1984 NYT obit about Dr. John P. Merrill being the Enola Gay flight surgeon or that he was in the Enola Gay during the Hiroshima mission is completely false. The actual flight surgeon was Dr. John Young from the 393rd Bomb Group that formed the core of the 509th Composite Group, the elite air group that flew both atomic missions. Merrill was not connected in any way with the 509th or the atomic missions. This comes directly from the official records of the 509th Composite Group and the autobiography of Paul Tibbets, the Enola Gay commander and head of the 509th.

By way of introduction, my name is John Coster-Mullen and I’m the author of Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man. Look me up on the internet. There are literally hundreds of listings for me, including a major cover story in the 12/15/08 issue of The New Yorker. Over the years, literally thousands of people have claimed to have been on the atomic missions. It is widely acknowledged by every historian that 12 men, and only 12 men, were inside the Enola Gay on the August 6, 1945 mission to bomb Hiroshima. These names are written in the history books. All the newspaper accounts from that time list 12 names. Spend some time, go to your local library, and dig out the New York Times microfilms, the Life Magazine collections, Time Magazine, etc. that will show you all the dozens of articles written in August 1945 about what was the most important event of WWII. They have detailed stories about all the crewmembers. John P. Merrill was not mentioned even one time. There were no flight surgeons onboard any of the planes. Indeed, why should there have been?

This is the official listing as shown in my book.

Enola Gay, 45-MO-44-86292, V-82, Strike Aircraft

           Commander                Col. Paul W. Tibbets
           Co-Pilot                       Capt. Robert A. Lewis
           Navigator                    Capt. Theodore J. Van Kirk
           Bombardier                 Maj. Thomas W. Ferebee
           Weaponeer                 Capt. William S. Parsons USN
           Electronics Test Ofc.   2nd Lt. Morris R. Jeppson
           ECM                            1st Lt. Jacob Beser
           Flight Engineer            S/Sgt. Wyatt E. Duzenbury
           Ast. Flight Engineer     Sgt. Robert H. Shumard
           Radar                          Sgt. Joseph A. Stiborik
           Radio                           Pfc. Richard H. Nelson
           Tail Gunner                 S/Sgt. George R. Caron

I’m certain Mr. Merrill was indeed, an important surgeon who made tremendous accomplishments in his field. However, he was not connected in any way with the 509th or the Hiroshima mission. This is a simple historical fact borne out by the full weight of historical evidence.

As far as who the actual surgeon was who handed Tibbets the pills, that would have been one of the 509th Composite Group members, and only one of the 509th members, and that person was Don Young, a member of the 393rd Bombardment Squadron that made up the core of the 509th. The 509th was an entirely self-contained air group and all had passed intensive security clearances from the FBI. For the most part they did not mingle with the other air groups on Tinian and certainly did not use personnel from these other air groups since they did not possess the same security clearances as the 509th. This security wall was never breached. Many of us have the entire listing of all the men in the 509th and that came primarily from the original 509th “yearbook” published shortly after the war ended. This master list was updated and collated in 1995 by Fred Bock and his wife using not only that original list, but other sources including group photos from 1944-45. Fred was one of the 15 509th airplane commanders and was on the Nagasaki mission commanding the Instrumentation Aircraft The Great Artiste. The name “John P. Merrill” does not show up on any of the listings of the 509th. That is a simple, historical fact not changed by how much dis-information that you show from the notoriously misinformed internet. I can also assure you the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) has the list of those 12 people that were inside the Enola Gay (EG) since it is on permanent display in their Udvar-Hazy building at Dulles Airport in DC. I personally know the man that was in charge of the EG restoration (I’ve been inside the EG for several hours on two occasions) for almost his entire career with the NASM and I can assure you the name John P. Merrill is definitely not on their list.

Paul Tibbets commanded not only the Enola Gay, but also the entire 1,800+ members of the 509th. He was tasked by General Ent with forming this group in late 1944. It was his crowning achievement in WWII. Tibbets own autobiography, in all its various editions, has always stated the following.

---

When we were about to leave the mess hall, flight surgeon Don Young came to my table and slipped me a small cardboard pillbox. “I hope you don’t have to use these,” he said, trying to be cheerful. “Don’t worry. The odds are in our favor,” I replied, slipping the box into a pocket in my coveralls. However casual we tried to be, the subject was grim. The pillbox contained 12 cyanide capsules, one for each member of the Enola Gay crew.

---

I consider this as the definitive primary source for who handed him this box and not the sources you have stated. Quite honestly, these atomic bombings were the most important events of the 20th Century and right from the beginning, everybody wanted to get in on this story. As historians, we have fended off countless thousands of people who have claimed over the last 66 years to have been in the Enola Gay (or one of the six other planes on that mission), flew fighter escort (didn’t happen), were on Tinian, or connected with the 509th in one way or another. The standing joke in the 509th is that if all the men who claimed to have been on Tinian in 1945 were actually there, the island would have sunk to the bottom of the Pacific! Almost all of these claims have proven false. Sometimes these are just claims by family members of a deceased loved one who had been telling a tall tale since he returned home after the war, but other times they have even included members of the 509th themselves, who, as they got on in years, tried to embellish their roles somewhat. As historians, we have struggled to remain objective, relying strictly on the massive amount of historical records relating to these atomic bombings to prove/disprove each claim as they come up. I was one of the people who helped write the official 509th Press Release last year that was instrumental in countering the fallacious clams of Joe Fuoco in the book Last Train From Hiroshima. Fuoco tried to claim he was the Flight Engineer on the Hiroshima Photo Plane Necessary Evil. Fuoco had been telling everyone this tall tale since 1945.

Regards, John Coster-Mullen — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atomicjohn (talk • contribs) 04:15, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

User:Atomicjohn has energetically and persuasively challenged Wikipedia’s article on John P. Merrill insofar as it links Merrill with the B-29 Enola Gay and the bombing of Hiroshima.

Our article John P. Merrill states Merrill was the flight surgeon aboard the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic weapon over Hiroshima on August 8, 1945. It cites an obituary written by Lawrence K. Altman in the New York Times on April 10, 1984. The statement in our article goes beyond what Altman wrote in his obituary – Altman merely wrote that Merrill was the flight surgeon to the B-29 Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic weapon over Hiroshima. Being the flight surgeon to the B-29 Enola Gay on an unspecified occasion, or for an unspecified time, is very different to being the flight surgeon aboard the Enola Gay during the flight to and from Hiroshima on August 8, 1945.

Altman’s obituary does not support the Wikipedia statement that Merrill was aboard the Enola Gay, and it certainly does not support the implication that Merrill was aboard the Enola Gay on its famous mission to Hiroshima. It is clear that the paragraph currently in John P. Merrill must be removed, at least until someone can supply a robust reference that establishes exactly what Merrill’s role was, if any, in connection with the Enola Gay or the bombing of Hiroshima. I will remove it. Dolphin (t) 04:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

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