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In Two Flights to Victory, historian David Styles presents the fascinating story of these significant air attacks connected by one man, reveals why they were developed apart from the main Allied strategy and how the pilots were selected for their missions.
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When it was deemed necessary to drop the atomic bomb, it was Doolittle who put forward his 12th Air Force comrade Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the Enola Gay with its deadly cargo to Hiroshima. The outcome was that the Allies never lost another battle all the way to Japan. One man was involved in both actions, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, the leader of the Doolittle Raid in which sixteen B-25 bombs struck at Tokyo and neighbouring cities, forcing the withdrawal of Japanese troops. They were the only such attacks on Japan that were not part of the overall battle plan, but they changed the course of human history. A grandson named after Tibbets followed his grandfather into the military as a B-2 bomber pilot currently stationed in Belgium.Īssociated Press writers James Hannah in Dayton, Jon Belmont in Washington and Hiroko Tabuchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.As the Second World War drew to a close, the United States launched two air attacks that would secure victory and peace, but at a terrible cost. Survivors include his wife, Andrea, and three sons, Paul, Gene and James, as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Tibbets told the Dispatch in 2005 he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war. "It's hard for people today to think about the atomic bombings without feeling they were just out and out atrocities, but people at the time had a very different sense of what they needed to do," Rhodes said. He was a man who took great pride in what he did during the war, including the atomic bombing," said Rhodes, who wrote "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." "He was so characteristic of that generation.
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In his later years, he frequently accepted speaking invitations and signed books on the bombing of Hiroshima, said granddaughter Kia Tibbets.Īuthor Richard Rhodes said Tibbets' feelings about the bombing he helped plan embodied public opinion at the time. Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution. government later issued a formal apology. He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. Eatherly is standing in the center of the.
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As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud. The B-29 Superfortress crew that flew over Japan and radioed that the weather appeared clear before the Enola Gay dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. "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. Tibbets said in 2005 that after the war he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide. He moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985. Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. Tibbets, 92, died at his Columbus home after a two-month decline caused by a variety of health problems, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. "He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch, and that was me,'" said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War." Tibbets grew tired of criticism for delivering the first nuclear weapon used in wartime, telling family and friends that he wanted no funeral service or headstone because he feared a burial site would only give detractors a place to protest.Īnd he insisted he slept just fine, believing with certainty that using the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more lives than they erased because they eliminated the need for a drawn-out invasion of Japan. The attack marked the beginning of the end of World War II. Throughout his life, Tibbets seemed more troubled by other people's objections to the bomb than by him having led the crew that killed tens of thousands of Japanese in a single stroke. COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who etched his mother's name - Enola Gay - into history on the nose of the B-29 bomber he flew to drop the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, died Thursday after six decades of steadfastly defending the mission.