Paul Tibbets (1915 – 2007) was the US Army Air Corps pilot of the B29 called Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb, codenamed Little Boy, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, during the Second World War. After the war, he remained in the US Air Force, taking part in the development of the B-47, which was the first American all-jet bomber. In the 1960′s he became a military attaché in India and retired in 1966 with the rank of Brigadier General.
Paul Warfield Tibbets was born in Quincy in western Illinois, to Paul Tibbets, Sr., on February 23, 1915. His mother’s name was Enola Gay Haggard. He was raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his father was a confections wholesaler. The family was listed there for the 1920 U.S. Federal Population Census. The 1930 census indicates that his family had relocated and was living at the time in Des Moines. Then, the family moved down to Miami, Florida. Tibbets attended the University of Florida in Gainesville and was an initiated member of the Epsilon Zeta Chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity during 1934. After his undergraduate work, Tibbets had planned on becoming an abdominal surgeon and attended the University of Cincinnati for a year and a half before changing his mind and enlisting in the Army Air Corps.
On February 25, 1937, Tibbets enrolled as a flying cadet in the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. He was commissioned a second lieutenant during 1938, receiving his flight commission at Kelly Field, Texas. Tibbets was appointed commanding officer of the 340th Squadron, 97th Heavy Bomb Group flying B-17 Flying Fortresses during March 1942. Based at RAF Polebrook, he piloted the lead bomber for the first 8th Air Force bombing mission in Europe on August 17, 1942. He also flew combat missions in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations until returning to the U.S. to test fly B-29 Superfortresses.
In September 1944, Paul Tibbets was assigned to command the project at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, which became the 509th Composite Group that was connected with the Manhattan Project. Tibbets baptized the B29, serial number 44-86292, "Enola Gay" after his mother. At 02:45 hours, on August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay took off the Tinian Island airfield, in the Marianas, with Tibbets at the controls and headed for Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bomb, codenamed Little Boy, was dropped over Hiroshima at 08:15 hours local time.
Respect to Colonel Tibbets.
Especially after Japanese actions in Singapore.
After Singapore, the Japanese nation was very lucky. For my part, even 68 years later, had I had any direction of Allied activities, no Japanese national would have remained on the planet and the islands of Japan would have been bombed into a radioactive wilderness, assuming that they could not have been totally destroyed.