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01 Nov 07 - 07:25 PM (#2184625) Subject: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: JohnInKansas Pilot of Hiroshima bomber dies The Associated Press updated 11:46 a.m. CT, Thurs., Nov. 1, 2007 COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night. Tibbets died at his Columbus home, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said. Tibbets' historic mission in the plane named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of World War II and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime. © 2007 The Associated Press There's an additonal brief bio bit at the link. John |
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01 Nov 07 - 07:57 PM (#2184646) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Sorcha Thank you John. A day to remember no matter what your reasons. And Kyoto survived. I'll bet my grandson will probably never know who or what Enola Gay was. He might learn about Hiroshima/Nagasaki. |
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01 Nov 07 - 07:59 PM (#2184650) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Bill D Enola is gay again, her son is home- R.I.P.... but folks will argue forever about whether Tibbets' flight was 'necessary'. After 4 years of that war (in which we WERE attacked), very few doubted that ending it suddenly was a good idea. Almost no one really visualized what the lasting effects of the A-Bomb would be. Tibbets was a dedicated airman, and could easily have NOT returned from that mission. I'm glad he stood firm in his belief that he did the best thing he could. |
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01 Nov 07 - 08:30 PM (#2184666) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: artbrooks It is a shame that Colonel Tibbits thought it necessary that he be buried in an unmarked grave so that his headstone would not be a focus for demonstrations (and, IMHO, desecrated on a regular basis). |
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01 Nov 07 - 09:23 PM (#2184697) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Sorcha Agreed, Art and Bill. Sad, sad. He did his Job to the best of his knowledge and ability. My dad, first troop ship into Yokohama Harbour, said that the Bomb was FAR better than a hand to hand, house to house invasion of the Home Islands. I am not sure, but that is hindsight because of the fallout and eventual repercussions of the atom bomb in general. The West still has difficulties understanding the Oriental culture and mores. |
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01 Nov 07 - 09:39 PM (#2184711) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Greg B The West still says 'Oriental.' But maybe it's just occidental. Blue skies and tailwinds Gen. Tibbetts. Who can imagine the depth of what went through your conscience these fifty years, though you remained stoic until the end. You did your duty, and what you promised to do. |
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01 Nov 07 - 09:45 PM (#2184714) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: catspaw49 Obviously a big story here in Columbus. The following to me is better than an obit. Mike Harden wrote it for the Columbus Dispatch for the 60th anniversary of the bombing in August of 2005. They reprinted it today. As you'll read he had a lot better idea of what to do with his remains. The voices of World War II are being silenced ever faster......the numbers dwidle down daily. The mind of the pilot whose B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb often seems more prisoner than resident of his bantamweight body wracked by injury, ailments and 90 years of living. In the months before today's 60 th anniversary of his mission to Hiroshima, Paul Tibbets was hobbled by a pair of spills that fractured two vertebrae. For a while, his appetite disappeared, his weight dropped alarmingly, and he railed against the fates torturing him in his waning years. "I've never been incapacitated a damned day of my life," he groused two months ago, daily downing enough OxyContin to make it out of bed and to an easy chair from which he stared at a television he could barely hear. Yet by August's first days, the fractures had mended, an orthopedic brace was gone, and his hallmark feistiness had returned. "He is still the general, and I am the Pfc.," said Andrea, the old pilot's wife of 51 years. "He went up in rank over the years, but I have stayed a Pfc." The traits that sometimes have made him a difficult mate — his single-mindedness, drive, tenacity and intolerance for mediocrity — endeared him to the military leadership that chose him to command the first atomic-bomb mission. "Paul's mind works like a com- puter," said Gerry Newhouse, Tibbets' former business manager and friend. "Eisenhower told (historian) Stephen Ambrose that Tibbets was the best bomber pilot in World War II. "His crews respected him. Psychologically, he could handle the aftereffects of such a mission. For the last 60 years, he has had to deal with the controversy." "I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets acknowledged Wednesday, noting of his crew, "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." On Aug. 3, 1945, he was told to proceed with "Special Bombing Mission No. 13." Less than three hours before takeoff, the 30-year-old colonel and his crew sat down to a midnight breakfast at a Tinian Island mess hall nicknamed the "Dogpatch Inn." When the Enola Gay, named for Tibbets' mother, roared down the runway in the predawn of Aug. 6, Tibbets was carrying his favorite smoking pipe, a few cigars and a small cardboard pillbox holding a dozen cyanide capsules, in case the crew had to bail out over enemy territory. Mission from childhood The seed of Tibbets' ultimate rendezvous with history likely was planted before he was a teenager. He was born in Quincy, Ill., and lived briefly in Iowa before his father moved the family to Miami. Tibbets, then 12, was hanging out at his father's business, Tibbets & Smith Wholesale Confectioners, when a barnstorming pilot entered the offices and announced that he needed an assistant for a bombing mission. While he piloted the plane over Miami's large public venues, an assistant would drop paper-parachuted samples of Baby Ruth candy bars to the crowd below. Tibbets volunteered against the wishes of his father, who already had determined that his son was going to be a doctor. The young man later recalled the week he spent dropping sweets from the back seat of a biplane, "No Arabian prince ever rode a magic carpet with a greater delight or sense of superiority to the rest of the human race." He was sent to military school and then entered the University of Florida, often spending more time at the Gainesville airstrip than in class. After his sophomore year, he was pressed by his father to transfer to the University of Cincinnati, where a family friend and physician could help cultivate his interest in medical school. It had the opposite effect. After a brief stint as an aide at the physician's two venereal-disease clinics, Tibbets — though deft with a syringe and needle — decided that there had to be something better in life than administering arsenic treatments to syphilitics. He applied to become an aviation cadet in the Army Air Corps. By late 1941, Tibbets had earned his commission and wings and, on Dec. 7, was flying his A-10 attack bomber to Savannah, Ga., after participating in a war-games mock surprise attack on ground troops at Fort Bragg. Homing in on the signal of a radio station's broadcast tower, he listened as a somber voice interrupted the music to announce the attack on Pearl Harbor. "I thought, 'Boy, Orson Welles is at it again,' " he recalled, referring to the Welles broadcast of War of the Worlds. When the U.S. entered the war, Tibbets flew B-17 sorties in the North Africa campaign, later leading the first daylight B-17 raid across the English Channel. He was on a B-17 mission in late 1942 when enemy flak exploded part of his instrument panel and peppered him with shrapnel. Tibbets says today that his missions over occupied Europe in his beloved Red Gremlin, though fraught with peril, were the most gratifying of all his military flying. A few months after he was wounded, Tibbets was ordered back to the States to begin testing the new Boeing B-29. By 1944, he knew the plane's capabilities as well or better than the company that built it, but some of the young pilots who would form his 509 th Composite Bomb Group thought the craft dangerous and unwieldy. To show the younger fliers that their fears were unfounded, Tibbets recruited two Women's Air Service Pilots to train on the B-29. To the embarrassment of the male pilots, they maneuvered the B-29 superbly, even with two of the four engines shut off. Visit from the feds In 1944, Tibbets learned that the FBI was nosing around his old neighborhood regarding his fitness for a top-secret clearance. They unearthed his lone arrest, at 19, after a Surfside, Fla., police officer had caught Tibbets and his date in the back seat of a car on a remote stretch of beach. When Gen. Uzal Ent informed Tibbets that he had been selected for the atomic-bomb mission, the general cautioned, "If this is a success, you'll be a hero. If not, it's possible that you could wind up in prison." Tibbets didn't know which it would be when, 10 miles from Hiroshima, his bombardier, Maj. Thomas Ferebee, broke in on the intercom: "OK, I've got the bridge." A T-shaped span over the Ota River was the target. "As we approached the aiming point," Tibbets remembered, "I watched for the first signs of anti-aircraft fire or fighter planes." There were none. When the bomb christened "Little Boy" tumbled from the belly of the Enola Gay, the plane's nose, unburdened of 8,900 pounds in an instant, jerked upward. Tibbets swung the craft into a 155-degree diving turn to put as much distance as possible between the impending blast and his bomber. Forty-three seconds later, the sky lit up with a terrible flash. "If Dante had been on the plane with us, he would have been terrified," Tibbets later said. "My God," co-pilot Capt. Robert Lewis scribbled in his flight log. Death estimates have varied widely. Some say 80,000 is a reliable figure, while noting that tens of thousands of others perished by year's end from the effects of radiation. The dead included 20,000 Koreans the Japanese had enslaved for war work. No escape from war Tibbets remained in the Air Force until 1966, leaving the service as a brigadier general. Not long after, he went to work for Executive Jet Aviation, a global all-jet, air-taxi company based in Columbus. His first assignment was in Geneva, Switzerland. He spent two years there before moving to Columbus and, in 1976, becoming the company's president. Throughout the '60s and '70s, Tibbets endured urban legends suggesting, among other falsehoods, that he was in prison or had died at his own hand. "They said I was crazy," he complained, "said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions. At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon." Tibbets retired from Executive Jet in 1987 and, since then, has been both hot and cold about his notoriety. He was active behind the scenes in the protest of the National Air and Space Museum's 1995 exhibit of part of the Enola Gay's fuselage, where the initial presentation suggested that the atomic bomb crews were agents of a vengeful nation. The script ultimately was changed. In late 2003, a fully restored Enola Gay went on display in a companion facility to the air and space museum in Chantilly, Va. "I wanted to climb in and fly it," Tibbets said. The exhibit opening was his last major public hurrah. This past spring, he gave up driving after his falls and what doctors think to have been two minor strokes. He convalesces in a home guarded by a yammering chihuahua named Lolita and looks out on a front yard whose chief adornment is a weeping Japanese cherry. At the 60 th anniversary, Tibbets said of his notoriety, "It's kind of getting old, but then so am I." He waved off other requests to be interviewed, in part because of his health and for weariness of suffering a new crop of reporters thinking they are the first to ask, "Any regrets?" His answer always has been a resounding "Hell, no," lately modified to lament, "The guys who appreciated that I saved their asses are mostly dead now." He is, today, a man untroubled with the certainty of joining their ranks. "I don't fear a goddamn thing," he said. "I'm not afraid of dying. "As soon as the death certificate is signed, I want to be cremated. I don't want a funeral. I don't want to be eulogized. I don't want any monuments or plaques. "I want my ashes scattered over water where I loved to fly." The English Channel. Tibbets' eyes brimmed for a moment when he pondered the absent friends who formed the unshakeable brotherhood that become the only religion some men ever know. "That's the first time I've seen that kind of emotion in 51 years," a clearly stunned Andrea said. "He doesn't want to have a tombstone or monument in a cemetery, because that would create a controversy," friend Gerry Newhouse said. One of the candidates for the eventual task of spreading Tibbets' ashes likely might be his grandson and namesake, Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets IV, a B-2 mission command pilot. His Air Force nickname is "Nuke." mharden@dispatch.com Spaw |
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01 Nov 07 - 10:05 PM (#2184728) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Rapparee Paul Tibbets was born in my home town. He completed his missions and flew them to the best of his ability. No greater praise! |
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02 Nov 07 - 03:17 AM (#2184802) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Art Thieme One of my earliest memories was the elation and celebration that erupted in the streets of Chicago when that war ended. It was magnificent and sublime that, even at five years old, I could emotionally partake in. We tore up paper and threw it out of our windows in celebration like thousands and thousands of others. My mother told me that it was something called "a parade" -- and for years afterward I thought that "a parade" meant to tear up paper and toss it out the window! And we KNEW that this great thing called PEACE was brought about, ultimately, by the actions of Paul Tibbets and his crew. Art Thieme |
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02 Nov 07 - 08:58 AM (#2184929) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Rapparee Let's not forget the actions of the crew of "Bockscar", piloted by Major Charles Sweeney as well. "Bockscar" is in the museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. |
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02 Nov 07 - 09:03 AM (#2184934) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Rapparee As my father, who was in the Army in Manila and slated for the Home Islands invasion force, wrote my mother, "I don't know anything about these new bombs, but I support anything that will save the lives of millions of people. And will bring me back to you and Mike faster." (I was six months old, almost to the day, when "Little Boy" was dropped. My father had never seen me.) |
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02 Nov 07 - 12:50 PM (#2185117) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: GUEST,SINSULL RIP It is frightening to me that most young people do not know that the United States is the only country ever to actually use a nuclear weapon in warfare. Yet here we pontificate about how Iran, Korea, Pakistan, etc. can't be trusted with one. Go figure. |
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02 Nov 07 - 09:54 PM (#2185416) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: robomatic A man who did his duty, and for the rest of his long life was able to bear the brunt of all opinions, no matter how ill informed or ill expressed. He expressed his own opinion of his mission and its meaning with elegance and grace. May he rest in peace in the wild blue yonder. |
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02 Nov 07 - 10:00 PM (#2185420) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: EBarnacle My father was in California on his final leave prior to embarkation on a troop ship for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. My mother was working out there so she could be with him until he shipped out. When they heard about the bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, they decided that he would probably come home alive. I was conceived as a result of the decision to shorten the war. My father's orders were changed to the Phillipines. Later he went to Japan as part of the occupation force. Do I regret the bomb? No. I regret that it was needed. Based upon the behavior of the troops on the islands we took, it was likely that many American and Japanese lives were saved, apologists to the contrary. |
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02 Nov 07 - 10:17 PM (#2185424) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Stilly River Sage Well, another voice needs to be heard, lest someone stumble on this thread and think all Mudcatters agree. I hate what Tibbets did and am amazed that he lived such an apparently long and untroubled life. But he was only the trigger man, the entire U. S. government was behind his act. It was deplorable. 100,000 lives, most of them civilians, lost in one fell swoop. This was a perverted experiment, and there is credible documentation to this affect. I'll dig out the article I use to make this case and transcribe it later. SRS |
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03 Nov 07 - 12:50 AM (#2185460) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: catspaw49 Really don't have to Maggie......I think the balanced work of Richard Rhodes covers the pros and cons of everyone from Roosevelt and Truman through Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer and all the other scientists, eventually leading down to Tibbets. Its one helluva' book and if there were but one, that would be it. Spaw |
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03 Nov 07 - 09:35 AM (#2185590) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: SINSULL I read "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" this past year. I found myself genuinely disturbed at the arrogance of the scientists and politicians (a nuclear reaction in downtown Chicago) and at my actually agreeing with the use of the bomb. I passed it on to Kendall but I don't know if he read. I recommend it for the same reasons Spaw did - a balanced picture of the pros and cons. |
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03 Nov 07 - 09:45 AM (#2185603) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Stilly River Sage I've been meaning to dig out this article anyway, because periodically it comes up in discussion. So maybe this will be the momentum to get it (it's a reversed text, white letters on a black background, from a microfilm, tough to read, impossible to photocopy). Thanks for the citation, though. |
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03 Nov 07 - 06:51 PM (#2185862) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Greg B Again--- I think some think that Gen. Tibbets was not troubled by what he participated in. If you read between the lines of his verbal account, he was clearly horrified in the moments afterwards. Where moments stretch to decades. As a 'Colonel' in the Commemorative Air Force, I stand and salute Gen. Paul Tibbets, USAF (Ret) for doing his duty as he saw it, and living, like so many vets, with the consequences to his spirit and psyche. Thank you, sir, and rest in peace. |
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03 Nov 07 - 06:54 PM (#2185864) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Stringsinger The atom bomb ushered in an era of possible extinction for all mankind. The debate rages on about how many lives it really saved. Utah Phillips has written the "Enola Gay" a great song about it. Do we really need bigger and better bombs in our future? Frank |
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03 Nov 07 - 07:02 PM (#2185870) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: SINSULL I too honor General Paul Tibbetts for his bravery and commitment. Mary |
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03 Nov 07 - 07:16 PM (#2185876) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Jeri What's a 'Commemorative Air Force'? It's hard to see how killing people could save more. It's also impossible to guess what would have happened if the bombs hadn't been dropped. If you see this on a small, short term scale, it was horribly wrong. If you have a longer, wider view, maybe the bombing DID prevent many more deaths than it caused, and maybe it just showed the world just how deadly this technology was and how dangerous humans could be. Maybe years down the road, other lives will have been saved because those two bombs showed what we were capable of. Nobody can know. It takes either an incredibly unfeeling person or an incredibly strong one to deal with the results of dropping a nuke. I don't believe Brig. Gen Paul Tibbets Jr. was unfeeling. |
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03 Nov 07 - 09:39 PM (#2185926) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: GUEST,Flatpick A "Commemorative Air Force" is what Greg B and I are proud members of - it commemorates brave men like Tibbetts and my dear late Dad who fought an Axis enemy so huge that without men like them,victory would have been impossible. |
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03 Nov 07 - 10:05 PM (#2185938) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: skipy On holiday last week I found the time read a book, I read the railway man by Eric Lomax. If "dropping the bombs" saved the life of one prisoner then it was justified, they went to hell & back, over & over again. His story, which has a "happy" ending can be found on Google, read about him, he is still with us! Your call, Skipy |
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03 Nov 07 - 10:12 PM (#2185939) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: robomatic I formed my views before reading "The Making Of The Atomic Bomb" by Rhodes, because I am the son of a serviceman who was in the Pacific at the time and regarded Hiroshima and Nagasaki as events which saved his life and made my life possible. I found Rhodes' book to be outstanding, because it starts with the history of the philosophies of the men behind it, and for one book contains incredible range and great depth. I was very impressed not with the arrogance of the Americans but with the broad inclusiveness of the decision making that went into the decision and targetting of the atomic weapons. Whatever one thinks about the validity of the decision, it is clear that a great deal of discussion took place among the leadership of the allies. It was a decision made from knowledge and not from prejudice. The atom bomb was an incredible weapon, but it should be noted that a single such bomb carried the destructive capacity of a couple of thousand plane raids. Japan was already experiencing thousand plane raids and Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been targetted conventionally had there not been an atomic option. What should give us pause is the capability of thermonuclear weapons, which expanded the destructive principles another three orders of magnitude beyond the atom bomb. The first hydrogen test in '52 was about 800 times larger than Trinity. Richard Rhodes wrote an excellent successor to the book mentioned above covering the development of thermonclear and the Soviet concurrent developments: "Dark Sun". There is also some very practical backing of the decision, i.e., an invasion of Japan was in the planning stages and would clearly take the war into 1946. Considering the vast numbers of enemy being killed by the existing aerial war machine, it is hard to argue convincingly that the A-Bombs did not save lives on both sides by shortening the war considerably. This is not an exercise in chest beating, and Tibbets never undertook it as such. I think he was honorable, decent, and intelligent, and in a way it is a warning we should all take to heart about what honrable, decent, and intelligent people are capable of. |
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03 Nov 07 - 10:31 PM (#2185947) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Jeri Thanks for the answer, Flatpick. I Googled and found the CAF Website |
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04 Nov 07 - 11:49 AM (#2186253) Subject: RE: BS: Obit: Paul Tibbets From: Gene Odd, but something that doesn't seem to warrant much attention from the NAYSAYERS is the UNDENIABLE FACT that both Germany and Japan were close to developing Atomic Weapons... In their peace-loving minds, they have probably convinced themselves that neither of those country's leaders would have used Atomic Weapons on England, The United States, Australia or any other allied countries in their conquest of the entire world! Certainly not Hitler, nor Hirohito! Oh, Forbid the thought. Of course, they also probably deny the slaughter of millions of Chinese by Japan, and the slaughter of millions by Germany! No guided missles fell on London and there wasn't really a Baatan Death March, and no concentration camps either! After all, it was Roosevelt's War, wasn't it? BAH! HUMBUG! |