You’ve got to leave the moral issue out of it. I don’t care whether you’re dropping atom bombs, or whether you’re dropping 100-pound bombs, or you’re shooting a rifle. Morality, there is no such thing in warfare. I was instructed to perform a military mission to drop the bomb and that was the thing that I was going to do to the best of my ability. Tibbets added, “I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I’m supposed to be a bomber pilot and destroy a target. So, I thought, you know, I’m just like that if I get to thinking about some innocent person getting hit on the ground. They assumed the symptoms of the patients and it destroyed their ability to render medical necessities. That is, they were selling legalized drugs for drug houses and so forth and so on, because they couldn’t practice medicine due to the fact that they had too much sympathy for their patients. And he was telling me about previous doctors, some that had been classmates of his, who were drug salesmen. “Well, then I got a thought that I had engendered and encountered for the first time in Cincinnati when I was going to medical school. “The first time I dropped bombs on a target over there, … I said to myself, ‘People are getting killed down there that don’t have any business getting killed. I didn’t order the bomb to be dropped, but I had a mission to do.In the 1989 interview, Tibbets also spoke of a lesson he learned in Cincinnati about doing his job: I didn’t think about what was going on down on the ground-you need to be objective about this. Down below all you could see was a black, boiling nest. The cloud went up rapidly and was 10,000 feet above us and climbing by the time we had turned around.
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A boiling, tumbling, rolling cloud rose up from the ground. Colonel (later General) Paul Tibbets was the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. It was a very sobering event, as we turned back over the target to take camera photos of the area. The first shock wave hit with a force of 2½ Gs, followed by a 2-G shock and a smaller third shock wave. B39c 50th Anniv of Strategic Deterrence Signed Paul Tibberts Pilot Hiroshima. The tail gunner called, “Here it comes.” I had a peculiar taste (electrolysis) in my mouth and saw a bright hue. WW2 Hiroshima Enola Gay pilot Paul Tibbets signed USAF cover. I made the required 155-degree turn away from the target and found my goggles made it so dark that I could not see the instruments, so I took them off. Immediately after the release Col Tibbets said: Nearly 80,000 people were killed instantly, and almost every building within a 2-mile radius was obliterated. The temperature of the ground beneath the burst reached an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Centigrade and the heat rays caused flash burns up to 13,000 feet away. In a millisecond, a force of 20,000 tons of TNT was released, generating a fireball of heat equivalent to 300,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The Little Boy uranium bomb fell from 31,600 feet, detonating 43 seconds later, 600 yards in the air over the city. By flying this plane his is killing many people and risking his own life to get back at Japan for. Two small corrections were made and we finally released the bomb.Īt precisely 0815:17 Japan time, the Enola Gay released the first atomic bomb over the target of Hiroshima. The crew put on the dark goggles and turned on the tone for the instrument plane to know exactly when the bomb was released. In August 1945 the confident and rambunctious Lewis was 27, with sturdy, all-American good looks and a reputation as a skilled pilot and determined ladies’ man. Lewis wrote shortly after the B-29 he was copiloting, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Ferebee checked the bomb sights and said “I have the aiming point in sight.” Van Kirk checked and agreed. IF I LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS, I’ll never quite get these few minutes out of my mind, Robert A. Col Tibbets described the final minutes before the drop: We made the final turn to 272 degrees magnetic course for 14 minutes (72 NM). The two other 509th planes that accompanied the Enola Gay included the instrument aircraft, the Great Artiste, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney and a third B-29, equipped with photographic equipment, commanded by Major George Marquardt.Īs the crew approached the mainland of Japan, the weather was clear for the visual drop requirement. Lewis, copilot Lt Jacob Beser, radar countermeasures officer and weaponeers, Captain William S. Tibbets, pilot and commander Capt Robert A. Ferebee, group bombardier Capt Theodore J. Duzenbury, flight engineer PFC Richard H. The crew consisted of the following people: SSgt George R. From Operational History of the 509th BombardmentĪt 0245 Tinian time on Monday, 6 August 1945, Col Tibbets and crew took off in the Enola Gay.