Brigadier General Paul W. Tibbet- Rest In Peace

Air Force Times: General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted for six decades after the war that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night. Tibbets died at his Columbus home. He suffered from a variety of health problems and was in decline for two months. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend.

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. The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the 5-ton “Little Boy” bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. . . . Three days later, the U.S. dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan . . . Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war . . .

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

The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton 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 statement. “Even fewer were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen as did Paul.” . . . Tibbets is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons — Paul, Gene and James — as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

To quote Debbie Schlussel, "One of America's Greatest Gone: Heroic Enola Gay Pilot Paul Tibbets Saved America": Retired Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, Jr.--the heroic American serviceman who did to Hiroshima what we should have already done to Tehran . . . He saved the Western world and his life had meaning for all of us, even though most do not know his name. And he wasn't just the pilot--he basically planned the whole mission. And he flew some of the first bombing missions against the Nazis and their allies. He was bright and had just the right amount of bravado to save America.

Sadly, in later life, the State Department treated him with dishonor when India criticized his role in saving the world from Axis forces. And the military apologized to the Japanese after Tibbets re-enacted his important flight. He had it right on America's schools and distorted history: The new wave of controversy about Hiroshima "got me roused up," Tibbets told the Palm Beach Post in 2001. "Our young people don't know anything about what happened because nobody taught them and now their minds are being filled up with things that aren't true."

But even after death, he's got the last laugh. Because he did not want to give left-wing anti-war protestors any opportunities to use his death for their cause, he will have no funeral or headstone and his ashes will be scattered over the North Atlantic. There is an inspiring, extensive set of excerpts from the fantastic obit/article about this great American in the Los Angeles Times. The first three sentences say it all, and I wish we would heed it about Iran (and perhaps some of the other choice Muslim countries in the Mid-East). We need another Truman in the White House and another Paul Tibbets leading the attack. . . .

To the end of his days, Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. believed that dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima was a justifiable means of shortening World War II and preserving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American servicemen who military experts said might have died in a final Allied invasion of Japan.

For Tibbets, the pilot whose bombing run unleashed the devastating explosive force and insidious nuclear radiation that leveled two-thirds of the city and killed at least 80,000 people, there was never any need to apologize. "I never lost a night's sleep over it," Tibbets said of the Aug. 6, 1945, attack.

To quote Andy Martin: THANK HEAVEN FOR GENERAL PAUL TIBBETS, WHO DROPPED THE BOMB ON HIROSHIMA. HE SAVED MY FATHER'S LIFE AND MY UNCLE'S. A SON OF ILLINOIS FLIES STRAIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF GOD . . . More than half a century later, we tend to see World War II, and war itself, in soft, sepia tones. Some people question whether bombing Japan was necessary. Pacifists condemn the United States for doing so. I do not. Bombing Japan was absolutely necessary. Japan would have never surrendered. The U. S. Marine battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima had presented graphic evidence of the bloody conflict that lay ahead. Thousands of Marines died subduing tiny islands. . . . General Tibbets saved my father's life, and my uncle's life, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of other American fathers and uncles, not to say countless of hundreds of thousands of Chinese, Koreans and others who risked savagery and death at the hands of Dai Nippon if WW II had continued. Well done, General. And Thank You.
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Taqs: atomic bomb, Enola Gay, General Paul Tibbets, Hiroshima, World War II