ENOLA GAY CREW (MORRIS JEPPSON) - ANNOTATED BASEBALL SIGNED - HFSID 294070

MORRIS JEPPSON
The Air Force officer who armed the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima signs a Rawlings Official Major League baseball in blue ink on the sweet spot.
Annotated Baseball signed: "Morris Jeppson/Enola Gay Mission", Rawlings Official Major League baseball, Allan H. Selig, Commissioner, signed in blue ink on the sweet spot. US Army Air Force 2nd Lt. Morris R. Jeppson (1922-2010), on his first and only combat mission, was the Weapons Test Officer on the Enola Gay responsible for arming the bomb in flight. On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets lifted off from Tinian Island on its mission to drop the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb, weighing 8,922 pounds, was released at an altitude of 31,060 feet and detonated at 1,400 feet, with an explosive force equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT.It killed 66,000 and injured 69,000 people, not including long-term victims of radiation exposure. However, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 9) hastened the surrender of Japan, ending WWII. General Charles Willoughby, General MacArthur's chief of intelligence, estimated that an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands, scheduled to begin on November 1, 1945, would have entailed one million American casualties, not to mention the horrific losses to Japanese soldiers and civilians. Fine condition.