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Episode #745 of Hometown Heroes, airing August 5-11, 2022, marks the 77th anniversary of the Enola Gay’s fateful mission to Hiroshima with one of the last surviving members of the 509th Composite Group, Norris Jernigan.

77 years after Jernigan left specialized training in Utah for the Pacific island of Tinian, sworn to secrecy about his unit’s mission, he returned to Historic Wendover Airfield and took to the skies in one of the last B-29s still flying, “Doc.” Check out the coverage of that May 2022 reunion from KSL-TV in Salt Lake City:

“I was given the seat right up in the front that would have been the bombardier’s seat, right up in the nose,” you’ll hear Jernigan explain on Hometown Heroes. “What a view, and what a thrill too.”

Jernigan was never part of a B-29 flight crew, but as an intelligence clerk with the 393rd Bomb Squadron, he did have a special connection to the history made on August 6, 1945. It’s a role he has discussed previously on Hometown Heroes, most recently on episode #640 in 2020, and as one of the last surviving members of his unit, he has embraced the responsibility of preserving that history and helping younger generations understand it through the context and perspective of the Greatest Generation.