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 in a 2005 interview. army air corps.Īfter the war, Tibbets was dogged by rumours claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide. He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the U.S. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami. "You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time.
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"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. 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," he said. 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. Shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. The Enola Gay before the bombing mission. Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Enola Gay Crew Recalled First Use of Atomic Bomb. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others. The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the bomb, dubbed "Little Boy," on the morning of Aug. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime. Tibbets' historic mission in the plane Enola Gay, named for his mother, marked the beginning of the end of the war in the Pacific.
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In 2005 newspaper interview, Tibbets said he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said. Tibbets suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months. Tibbets died at his Columbus home, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. COLUMBUS, Ohio – Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during the Second World War, died today.