[FPSPACE] commander of Enola Gay dies at 92

Fri Nov 2 12:19:16 EST 2007

Colleagues,

nothing to do with space, /per se/, but a seminal person of the age.

***

from the AP:

Enola Gay pilot Paul W. Tibbets dies at age 92 
Associated Press
Friday, November 2, 2007 

Associated Press

Col. Paul W. Tibbets stands beside the B-29 bomber Enola Gay at an
unknown location in 1945.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul W. Tibbets, who etched his mother's name -
Enola Gay - into history on the nose of the B-29 bomber he flew to
drop the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, died Thursday after six decades
of steadfastly defending the mission. He was 92.

Throughout his life, Tibbets seemed more troubled by other people's
objections to the bomb than by having led the crew that killed tens
of thousands of Japanese in a single stroke. The attack marked the
beginning of the end of World War II.

Tibbets grew tired of criticism for delivering the first nuclear
weapon used in wartime, telling family and friends that he wanted no
funeral service or headstone because he feared a burial site would
only give detractors a place to protest.

He insisted he slept just fine, believing with certainty that using
the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more lives than they erased
because they eliminated the need for a drawn-out invasion of Japan.

"He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do
this and not flinch - and that was me,' " said journalist Bob Greene,
who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the
Man Who Won the War."

Tibbets died at his Columbus home after a two-month decline caused by
a variety of health problems, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend.

"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was
able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as
it did," he said in a 1975 interview.

"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We
were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal."

He added: "I sleep clearly every night."

Filmmaker Ken Burns said Tibbets' life "helps to take this
incredible, gigantic event and personalize it. This is a real human
being who changed the course of the world inexorably on that August
morning."

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill.,
and spent most of his boyhood in Miami. He was a student at the
University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw
in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.

"I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional
thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on the 60th
anniversary of the bombing. "We had feelings, but we had to put them
in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and
left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so
that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."

Tibbets, a 30-year-old colonel at the time, and his crew of 13
dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima the morning of
Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed or injured at least 140,000.

Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on
Nagasaki, killing at least 60,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that
mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later.

"It did in fact end the war," said Morris Jeppson, the officer who
armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight. "Ending the war saved a
lot of U.S. armed forces and Japanese civilians and military. History
has shown there was no need to criticize him."

After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming
he was in prison or had committed suicide.

"They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of
institutions," he said. "At the time, I was running the National
Crisis Center at the Pentagon."

Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He
moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired
in 1985.

In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an
appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29
Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below
created a mushroom cloud.

He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the
Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal
apology.

Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted
over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the
Smithsonian Institution.

The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have provided
the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the
Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a
demonstration bombing and the selection of a target.

Veterans groups objected that it paid too much attention to Japan's
suffering and too little to Japan's brutality during

and before World War II and

that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have
perished in an invasion. They said the bombing of Japan was an
unmitigated blessing for the United States and its fighting men and
the exhibit should say so.

Tibbets denounced it as "a damn big insult."

The museum changed its plan and agreed to display the fuselage of the
Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.

The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio, plans a
photographic tribute to Tibbets, who was inducted in 1996.

"There are few in the history of mankind that have been called to
figuratively carry as much weight on their shoulders as Paul
Tibbets," Director Ron Kaplan said in a news release. "Even fewer
were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen
as did Paul."

Tibbets told the Dispatch in 2005 he wanted his ashes scattered over
the English Channel, where he loved to fly.

He is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons, Paul, Gene and
James, as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
A grandson named after Tibbets followed his grandfather into the
military as a B-2 bomber pilot currently stationed in Belgium.

Associated Press writers James Hannah in Dayton and Jon Belmont in
Washington contributed to this report.

***

I did an interview of Dutch van Kirk (the navigator of the Enola Gay)
for /The Moscow Times/ back on the 55th anniversary, and he said the
same thing:

http://www.ultimax.com/pic/MoscowTimesp2.jpg 

I was happy to see that these same points were made during the final
episode of the Ken Burns' documentary "The War" on PBS. 

--

Robert

Robert G Kennedy III, PE
www.ultimax.com