9, Major Sweeney piloted the Bockscar, carrying a plutonium bomb even more powerful than the Enola Gay's bomb. When the Enola Gay dropped its uranium bomb on the city, unleashing the power of atomic energy for the first time as a weapon of war, the Great Artiste dropped measuring instruments. 6, 1945, accompanying the Enola Gay, piloted by Col. Having the rank of major in the Army Air Forces at the time, he flew his bomber, the Great Artiste, to Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. The cause was pulmonary complications of congestive heart disease, his son-in-law Brian Howe said. General Sweeney, who lived in Milton, Mass., was 84. Sweeney, who flew the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the second atomic strike on Japan in the final days of World War II, died Friday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
