![flight crew of the enola gay flight crew of the enola gay](https://www.oakauctions.com/ItemImages/000001/enolaPaul%20Tibetts%20Enola%20Gay_lg.jpeg)
There are many incorrect lists online of the planes and crews that flew on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing missions. Crews were often rotated around during the missions. The term “pumpkin bomb” can apply to both the dummy concrete bombs used at Wendover for training, and to the high-explosive bombs dropped over Japan. They had been specially modified to accomodate the size and weight of the atomic bombs. You’ve got to leave the moral issue out of it.All of the B-29s involved in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and "pumpkin bomb" training and combat missions at Wendover, UT and on Tinian were Project Silverplate B-29s. I don’t care whether you’re dropping atom bombs, or whether you’re dropping 100-pound bombs, or you’re shooting a rifle. Morality, there is no such thing in warfare. I was instructed to perform a military mission to drop the bomb and that was the thing that I was going to do to the best of my ability. Tibbets added, “I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I’m supposed to be a bomber pilot and destroy a target. So, I thought, you know, I’m just like that if I get to thinking about some innocent person getting hit on the ground. They assumed the symptoms of the patients and it destroyed their ability to render medical necessities. That is, they were selling legalized drugs for drug houses and so forth and so on, because they couldn’t practice medicine due to the fact that they had too much sympathy for their patients. And he was telling me about previous doctors, some that had been classmates of his, who were drug salesmen. “Well, then I got a thought that I had engendered and encountered for the first time in Cincinnati when I was going to medical school. “The first time I dropped bombs on a target over there, … I said to myself, ‘People are getting killed down there that don’t have any business getting killed. In the 1989 interview, Tibbets also spoke of a lesson he learned in Cincinnati about doing his job: Tibbets retired as a brigadier general in 1966 and went on to run an air taxi company in Columbus, where he died in 2007. He named the B-29 after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, who was supportive of his career change. The man who flew the plane that delivered the bomb over Hiroshima always maintained he was proud of his service to his country, and slept well at night.
![flight crew of the enola gay flight crew of the enola gay](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jwBHIiSmf0o/hqdefault.jpg)
Some people argue that they prevented a potentially more devastating invasion of Japan, including countless more deaths, and brought the war to a speedy end. The bombings have been endlessly debated.
![flight crew of the enola gay flight crew of the enola gay](https://www.mearsonlineauctions.com/ItemImages/000117/117420b_lg.jpeg)
Not only did it change warfare, but it ushered in the atomic age, one where mankind became capable of obliterating itself. 9, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, killing another 70,000.įive days after that, Japan surrendered and World War II was finally over.ĭropping the atomic bomb was a watershed moment in human history. Over the next few years, the death toll would reach about 200,000 due to burns, radiation poisoning and cancer, according to the U.S. In an instant, 70,000 people were obliterated. It was the first time a devastating nuclear device had been unleashed upon a populated target. Tibbets Jr., took off from Tinian island in the Pacific Ocean, loaded with the world’s deadliest payload – an atomic bomb codenamed “Little Boy.”Īt approximately 8:15 a.m., Tibbets and his crew dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, and the city disappeared in a mushroom cloud. 6, 1945, the B-29 Superfortress bomber “Enola Gay,” piloted by Col.