Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another plane from the 509th leveled much of Nagasaki with another nuclear bomb, prompting the Japanese surrender. “Hap” Arnold as “the best damned pilot in the (Army) Air Forces,” Tibbets was hand-picked to command the mysterious 509th Composite Group, the first military unit ever formed to wage nuclear war. 6, 1945.ĭescribed by his commandant, Gen. 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.
“I made one great mistake in my life – when I signed a letter to President Roosevelt recommending that an atomic bomb be made,” said pioneering physicist Albert Einstein, one of the first to conceive of such a weapon. Tibbets died at his Columbus home, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night. The flight to Japan took about 6 hours, and Enola Gay arrived over Hiroshima in clear weather at 32.333 feet (9.855 meters). COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. Two other B-29s escorted Enola Gay on the mission and provided measuring and photography equipment.
Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menuīut 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. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay waves from the cockpit before taking off to Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.