Captain Daniel Saponar
United States Army Air Corps Captain Daniel "Sparky" Saponar was a magician and B-29 pilot who was chosen to fly the aircraft carrying the atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He successfully dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but when the bomb bay door jammed over Nagasaki, he sacrificed himself by manually opening the door, leading to him falling out of the aircraft with the bomb, but allowing the rest of the B-29's crew to fly to safety.
Early Life and Career
Daniel Saponar was born in Iasi, Great Romania in 1919 on the same day of the ratification of the Treaty of Saint Germain, September 10th. When he was eight years old, his family emigrated to the United States, and he grew up in New York City. When he was twelve, he met newly-arrived Michal Anielewicz and the two became very close friends. He joined the Army Air Corps at age 17 and trained as an aircraft mechanic on B-29s.
When Saponar emigrated as a child, there weren't yet standard magician screenings set up. He wasn't identified as a magician until he was twenty years old, when the U.S. Armed Forces began to test all servicemembers. Upon his positive test, he was removed from his position as a mechanic until he was deemed to be fully in control of his abilities. Upon reinstatement of his job, he began to seek training as a pilot.
At age 21, Saponar would receive word that his entire extended family in Romania was killed in the Iasi pogrom in late June of 1941. This event would catalyze him to press harder for pilot training, which he was granted immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor later that year.
When I got word of the pogrom, I couldn't take a breath in. I thought about the breaths that none of them would ever take again. I thought about what would have happened to us--Mama, Tata, Rahela, and me--if we hadn't left.
I'm ashamed to admit the anger, and the grief, got to me, and I could feel the burn in my bones. I'm frightened of what I could have done just then, if I'd been in Iasi, if I'd had those men responsible in my hands.
- journal of Captain Saponar,
recovered after his death
Heroism
Sparky'd been on the Hiroshima bird when that bomb jammed, and the bombardier kicked it out. So when ours jammed too, he looked at me--looked right at me, I'll never forget that expression, never--and he said, "Keep her steady, Hank." And then he ran out of the cockpit. I yelled at him to come back, to fly the plane. I didn't know what he was planning until Jim (the bombardier) ran up and said, "Sparky's gone!"
And I knew. God damn it, I knew. And I turned that bird out to sea like we trained, and I got it out of there before the cloud came up.
- statement of copilot Captain Henry Jackson
in his report on the death of Captain Saponar
Saponar completed his pilot training and began to fly the aircraft he'd been a mechanic for. His success as a pilot brought him to the attention of the men who would eventually tap him as the pilot of the bomber carrying the payload bound for the city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. This conventional payload jammed in the bomb bay as the aircraft approached the city, and bombardier Captain Michal Anielewicz dislodged the bomb from where it was jammed in the bay; tragically, he fell out with the bomb and lost his life. When Anielewicz and the bomb hit the ground, the subsequent explosion was not the expected conventional detonation, but a nuclear one.
Saponar took Anielewicz's death hard, as they had both been Jewish and magicians, and had developed a close bond during their time as crewmates. Saponar was also deeply affected by the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and the reports that were coming in about its effects.
On August 9th, 1945 Saponar was once again tasked with flying a sortie to a Japanese city, this time the city of Nagasaki. When the bombardier First Lieutenant James Gray reported that the payload had jammed yet again, Saponar put his copilot Captain Henry Jackson in charge of the aircraft and dislodged the bomb himself, meeting Anielewicz's same fate and detonating a second nuclear blast in Japan.
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