government later issued a formal apology. He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud. In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.īut his role in the bombing brought him fame - and infamy - throughout his life. Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. "At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon." "They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions," he said. 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.Īfter the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., spent most of his boyhood in Miami. There are no Marquess of Queensberry rules in war. "You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. "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. It was, he said, his patriotic duty - the right thing to do. Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible." We knew it was going to kill people right and left.
"We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. 6, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the bomb. "I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on Aug. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war. Three days later, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people.
The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others. 6, 1945, when the plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima. It was the first time man had used nuclear weaponry against his fellow man. Tibbets' historic mission in the plane Enola Gay, named for his mother, marked the beginning of the end of World War II. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest. Tibbets died at his Columbus home after a two month decline from a variety of health problems, said Kia Tibbets, Paul's granddaughter. Two years later, he was reassigned to the US, to test-fly the new longer-range Superfortresses that would carry out the missions against Hiroshima and, three days later, against Nagasaki.Commander, Pilot Of Plane That Dropped Hiroshima Bomb Dead At 92ĬOLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday, a spokesman said. In 1942 he was named commanding officer of the 340th Bomb Squadron of B-17 Flying Fortresses, which operated out of Britain against Nazi Germany. Tibbets had joined what was then called the Army Air Corps in 1937, when he enlisted as a flying cadet at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. And, he added, "I sleep clearly every night." There are no Marquess of Queensberry rules in war". We were at war, and you use anything at your disposal.
"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said years later. It was his patriotic duty, he insisted, to carry out an attack that shortened the war. Like President Harry Truman who ordered the attack, Tibbets never expressed regret over his role, whatever the controversy that has raged ever since.