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Hiroshima pilot dies

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The Hairy Wookie
4 Feb 2005
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The man who piloted the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima died today at 92.

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I find it sad that he asked for no headstone in-case it became a target for people.
 
From the Los Angeles Times...

Paul Tibbets, pilot who bombed Hiroshima, dies at 92


By Eric Malnic, Special to The Times
9:40 AM PDT, November 1, 2007

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., the Army Air Forces pilot whose bombing run over Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 introduced nuclear war, died today at his home in Columbus, Ohio. He was 92.

Tibbets suffered from a variety of ailments and died of heart failure, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend.


Retired Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets
click to enlargeHe never apologized for unleashing the devastating explosive force and insidious nuclear radiation that leveled more than two-thirds of the buildings in Hiroshima and killed at least 80,000 people, and perhaps as many as 127,000.

To him and millions of supporters, dropping the atomic bomb was a justifiable means of shortening World War II, preserving the lives of up to a million American servicemen that military experts said might have died in a final Allied invasion of Japan.

"I never lost a night's sleep over it," Tibbets said.

But to millions of detractors, the nuclear attack on Hiroshima was a cosmic example of man's inhumanity to man, an act that left the world teetering on the brink of self-annihilation.

"I made one great mistake in my life -- when I signed a letter to President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt recommending that an atomic bomb be made," said pioneering physicist Albert Einstein, one of the first to conceive of such a weapon.

Tibbets was more than just the pilot of the Enola Gay, the propeller-driven, four-engine bomber, named for his mother, that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

Described by his commandant, Gen. H.H. (Hap) Arnold as "the best damned pilot in the [Army] Air Force," Tibbets was hand-picked to command the mysterious 509th Composite Group, the first military unit ever formed to wage nuclear war. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another plane from the 509th leveled much of Nagasaki with another nuclear bomb, prompting the Japanese surrender.

Tibbets chose the planes that flew those missions -- specially reconfigured B-29s, then the largest operational aircraft on Earth, stripped of armament and armor plating to lighten them for their extended journeys.

He selected the combat veterans who manned the bombers. Many of the crewmen were personal friends who had flown missions with him over Nazi-occupied Western Europe and North Africa.

Tibbets picked an isolated air base straddling the Nevada-Utah border where the men of the 509th trained for their ultra-secret mission. And he drove his men hard, weeding out those who fell short or talked too much about what they were doing.

Proud, *****ly and a perfectionist, Tibbets never doubted that he was the man for the job.
 
Poor old man. Lives so many years knows about killing so many human beings its real horror for pilot of Air Force. I'm realy compassion for people who kills other often innocent, poor people from unknown countries. But from the other side death is the saving from remember what peoples like this pilot do.
 
I agree that the bombing of Hiroshima is justified. However one cannot imagine how he has managed to do all these years knowing that he's, technically speaking, the world's biggest murderer.
 
I agree that the bombing of Hiroshima is justified. However one cannot imagine how he has managed to do all these years knowing that he's, technically speaking, the world's biggest murderer.

Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Mao Zedung have the lock on that title.
 
weijin88 said:
I agree that the bombing of Hiroshima is justified. However one cannot imagine how he has managed to do all these years knowing that he's, technically speaking, the world's biggest murderer.
Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Mao Zedung have the lock on that title.
Plus a few others; Genghis Khan, General Franco, Pol Pot. The pilot wouldn't even make the top 40.
 
Atomic Bomb Pilot Guilt or; Hiroshima Pilot Dies

technically speaking, the world's biggest murderer.

It was not murder. If that was true, then every soldier in war who shot a gun at someone, lobbed a grenade, help reload and shot artillery rounds, and also was captured. They would be put on trial for murder.


That would be almost every single POW; except the cooks, the chaplains, and the translators.
 
It was not murder. If that was true, then every soldier in war who shot a gun at someone, lobbed a grenade, help reload and shot artillery rounds, and also was captured. They would be put on trial for murder.
That would be almost every single POW; except the cooks, the chaplains, and the translators.

And don't forget the medics.
 
I am glad that he could keep a clear conscience. If he didn't view what he did as right I think he would've have lived a tortured life mentally or like others, he would have commited suicide. I was surprised that he lived a long life, somewhere I thought that I heard that the pilots were exposed to a lot of the radiation.
 
I agree that the bombing of Hiroshima is justified. However one cannot imagine how he has managed to do all these years knowing that he's, technically speaking, the world's biggest murderer.
He wasn't murderer he get an order to do what he do. He was just a soldier.
P.S.
Sorry for my english
 
My vote, Not murder, but....

As I have mentioned many times, I was a non-combat Air Force veteran although I served in 69-75, the closest I came was NKP Thailand, in late 73, early 74, so I am 99% sure I supported no bombing or killing.

But it always, always struck me, how "detached" humans can be about killing civilians, even while under orders.

The only consolation I have is that I totally understand that the civilian government, a responsible civilian government, must have a short leash on all military operations should it engage in some kind of war effort.

As I have spoken of before, the numerous veterans I have spoken to try to not talk about their experiences, and almost refuse to talk about it. But when they do finally open up, after decades of "stuffing it in their shoe", for the most part I believe, they are filled with sadness and remorse about what they had done as young military persons, and for buddies that never came back.

Would they do it again? If they felt the need to protect their country, any country, they would go back in a heartbeat. But they also are unanimous on the latest several "wars" that America has been engaged in, and totally wish the VietNams, Koreas, Iraqs, Afghanistans had never happened, and I think that would also include the Hiroshimas and Nagasakis bombs.

But this is only my opinion.
 
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