Pilot of plane that bombed Hiroshima dies (Paul Tibbets)

[RamboLiberal]

Source: MSNBC

Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday, a spokesman said. He was 92.

Tibbets died at his Columbus home after a two month decline from a variety of health problems, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said.

Tibbets’ historic mission in the plane Enola Gay, named for his mother, marked the beginning of the end of World War II. It was the first time man had used nuclear weaponry against his fellow man.

“It’s an end of an era,” said Newhouse, who served as Tibbets’ manager for a decade. “A lot of those guys are gone now.”

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21578185/

---

We will debate till eternity on the necessity of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I don't blame the crews even though some regretted what they were ordered to do and some never did.

I wish we had never invented these terrible weapons and I hope that they will never be used again and that mankind may eventually grow to the point where they will all be destroyed.

May this truly be the end of an era.

[poverlay]

1. A very good, brave and strong man. He will be missed. n/t

[eagler]

3. Amen. May he rest in peace.

[wtmusic]

2. All things considered, the 60+ years since they were invented

have been the most peaceful years in history. No guarantees on how long that will last...just sayin'.

[Hobarticus]

4. Rest in peace, Colonel.

Thank you for your service.

[kestrel91316]

5. He was a man of courage. He knew he would pay a personal price for

what he truly believed we HAD to do. He has my respect.

[HereSince1628]

6. I think the A-bomb attacks were much more than the beginning of the end

They WERE the end. Everything after them was EPILOGUE.

I have no bone to pick with Tibbets. Tibbets did something that physicists made possible and that the national leadership asked him to do. Any culpability must be spread around a pretty wide circle.

May God rest Tibbet's soul and that of his mother, whose name is perhaps better known than her son's but mostly in infamy.

[av8rdave]

7. Just like our troops in Iraq, he served honorably and did what his commanders asked him to do.

RIP Col. Tibbets.

[sdfernando]

8. No funeral - So sad.

Unfortunate that there will be no funeral or gravestone. I understand his concern, but wish it didn't have to be so.

RIP brave sir.

[ChazII]

48. Joining others in saluting you, sis. RIP.

[John Kerry VonErich]

9. A real hero who helped end the war.

nt

[Bonobo]

10. Gotta be a tough old bird to snuff that many innocents and still live to a ripe old age!

[John Kerry VonErich]

11. Let me ask you this.

Was WWII worth it at all?

[AllexxisF1]

12. ...

No war ever is.


I always loved that scene in the Band Of Brothers episode when the guy who went to Harvard stands up in the "6 by" and yells at the incredible numbers of German war prisoners . He yelled comments like "What the hell were you thinking" etc.

Very powerful moment.

[Oeditpus Rex]

13. Thus passes another on my 'A' list of people I'd like to meet

For what it's worth, when Enola Gay co-pilot Capt. Bob Lewis saw the mushroom cloud, he wrote in his mission diary, "My God! What have we done?"

Farewell, General. For better or for worse, you performed your mission well. :patriot:

[mooseandsquirrel]

14. Hiroshima pilot dies aged 92

Source: Guardian Unlimited

The pilot of the US bomber Enola Gay, which in 1945 dropped the first nuclear bomb to be detonated in wartime, died today at the age of 92.
Paul Tibbets was in command of the B-29 aircraft, which dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima as the US tried to end the second world war without a ground invasion of Japan.

snip

m&s
http://moose-and-squirrel.com

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,2203557,00.html

[Richardo]

15. RIP

:patriot:

[Ian David]

16. And after they bury him, they plan on dropping a second coffin nearby. n/t

[shain from kane]

17. Was he cremated? He certainly urned it. n/t

[Algorem]

40. he wanted his ashes dropped into his shiitake mushroom garden

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jdlh8894]

20. Your hate is misplaced.

He was following orders. He had no participation in making it or the decision on where it was to be dropped. All he did was pilot the plane and obey orders from above. eom

[demosincebirth]

21. Well said.

[superconnected]

24. 1. I don't see that person's post as hate.

2. Just following orders didn't work for the nazis in the nuremberg trials.

[Thickasabrick]

41. .

[tuckessee]

45. Does the "following orders" excuse work only for Americans?

Do you let the other nations' killers of civilians skate as readily as you do your own?

Should the actual perpetrators of war crimes be excused as long as there is someone above them in the chain of command?

[AndyTiedye]

51. He Probably Had Little Idea What He Was Dropping

[Name removed]

25. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

26. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Hobarticus]

27. Self-delete...

Sheesh.

[superconnected]

19. No guilt for killing 80k people. Instead is glad of the people he saved

had we invaded them.

How about us having simply NOT invaded them.

Plus it said in the article that he was there when they decided not to give Japan a demonstration but instead do the real thing.

What bugs me also is that nagasaki was 3 days after. Why bother. By then Japan knew what we had.

The winner of the war - the person willing to kill the most people the most conviently and scare everyone else.

[depakid]

22. "Why bother. By then Japan knew what we had."

One word:

Saipan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan

[RamboLiberal]

28. And how about all the Chinese the Japanese killed?

Seems to me the war mongerers in Japan were very brutal to those they invaded or captured. Posters like you never mention those victims. Guess you never heard of the Rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March!

The Japanese and the Nazi Germans reaped unfortunately what they sowed. There were a helluva lot of adults in both countries who stood and cheered their conquering armies.

Still it is a shame that children have to pay for the sins of the adults.

[Hobarticus]

29. At least the poster has something in common with the Japanese...

The Chinese, Koreans, and pretty much anyone else who woke up one morning as involuntary subjects of the Rising Sun didn't matter much to the Japanese, either.

[superconnected]

31. Interesting how the blanket statement is on the "Japanese"

My aunt and cousins are japanese Americans - moved here after the war, and they do care about people.

[Hobarticus]

33. Yep. The "American" army is in Iraq and Afghanistan...

Even though you and I aren't in the army. Funny how that works.

[RamboLiberal]

35. You know I'm talking about those who lived in Japan at that time

and supported the regime who treated Chinese, Koreans and others who got in the way of their military expansion with brutality. Same with the Nazis in Germany.

I'm not talking about Japanese Americans and you damn well know it.

[superconnected]

37. I'm saying part of my family lived there at the time, and they care about

people. You're still making a blanket statement about the Japanese people.

You must really hate them to attribute so much hate to them.

The correct answer you should have come back with, was you were talking about the japanese military. Instead you came back with that you mean the japanese living there at the time.

ewwww.

I did not make this about japanese americans. I made this about japanese people living there at the time. Again, They came here AFTER the war.

[superconnected]

32. I think they should have picked military targets and not civilians.

Brutality is no excuse for brutality.

There are other ways to solve things. Targeting innocent people to *show* them, is not the way.

[RamboLiberal]

36. Unfortunately in a bombing campaign of WWII

it is impossible to just target "military" targets. Both the U.S. and Britain had horrendous losses of bombers, in fact Britain to such an extent in bombing Germany that they had to take to night bombing where accuracy was impossible. Even the famed Norden bombsight was highly overrated for pinpoint bombing. And try bombing accurately when you have flak and fighters pursuing your planes.

As I said before both Japan and Germany reaped what they sowed. Germany didn't hesitate to bomb civilians. And Japan didn't either, and if Japan had been closer to the U.S. mainland they would have devastated our cities as well.

There were a lot of young men who were barely grown who were being killed in those bombers, ships and ground fighting. They weren't professional soldiers or sailors for the most part.

I can't blame those in charge for taking it to the Japan and Germany in the harshest ways possible to try to bring an end to the war sooner rather than later. I think they had to destroy in the civilian populations the will to continue to support their governments to carry on the war.

It is a shame that man invented such weapons as the incendiary bomb and the atomic bomb, but perhaps Germany and Japan (and their citizens) should've thought about that before they set off on expanding their empires at the point of the gun and the bomb.

[sofa king]

49. Not invading was an unlikely option.

By August of 1945 virtually everyone in the Pacific theater was at least dimly aware of what was next on the agenda. Okinawa's strategic significance was obviously as a staging base for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu. There was no discussion of cancellation of the operations, rather, they were expected to happen whether the atomic bombs were dropped or not.

The Japanese were certainly aware of it. They reserved 5,000 planes for kamikaze attacks in defense of Kyushu, with 3,000 of them allocated to the destruction of the American troop transports in hopes of killing half of the American landing forces before they hit the beaches. It was their hope that the ratio of one hit for every six suicide attacks would me maintained or even improved because of the lack of early radar warning.

In July, it was discovered by the Americans that there were already nine divisions in Kyushu--three times the original estimate. By August, there were 450,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, expected to die to a man in defense of the Japanese home islands. Women and children were also warned by Japanese authorities that they were expected to fight and die.

Worse, the American landing beaches were correctly identified by the Japanese and a clever defense in depth was designed and in place, with the intention of causing as many American casualties as possible while preserving Japanese forces. This would have entailed a completely different set of tactics from what the Americans were used to and for what they were expecting to find. One backup plan was for the use of atomic weapons as tactical weapons. The dangers of radiation were poorly understood at the time, and the plan involved sending American troops into what now would be considered highly dangerous radioactive territory. Everyone involved in those operations would have had their lives dramatically shortened and considerably burdened with illness, even had they survived the combat itself.

Still worse than that, the invasion of Kyushu was to be commanded by Douglas MacArthur, in my opinion the worst American high commander of the war and notorious for the low price he put on American lives. He chose to ignore all of these warning signs and maintained that the estimates of 109,000 American deaths in the projected 90-day campaign would still hold true. He had no intention of halting or delaying the invasion for any reason whatsoever, and it's unlikely that he would have been overruled by General Marshall or the President.

A huge proportion of America's high school class of 1945 was slated for combat operations in Japan, as the civilian manufacturing sector was no longer suffering a labor shortage and even had room to expand thanks to the influx of former American troops too badly wounded to return to fighting, while the administrative ranks of the armed forces were also filled. Those seventeen and eighteen year old kids would have been a lost generation, with virtually none of them escaping death, injury, or the mental anguish of combat. The program to send our best and brightest students on to college for future officer positions in the Army had been canceled, and those students had been placed in the rank and file of the infantry divisions, instead.

It's not unreasonable to guess that half a million humans would perish in the invasion of Kyushu. It was to be immediately followed by the still more difficult and bloody Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu. Coronet was expected to last well into 1946.

Unknown to the Americans, the Soviets had dramatically accelerated plans to invade the almost undefended northern island of Hokkaido (they actually did invade in August, 1945) and it seems likely that island would have been incorporated into the Soviet Sakhalin Island territories, with the ultimate intention of bringing all of Japan into the Soviet sphere of influence. In Europe, George S. Patton was already lobbying for the reconstitution of the German armed forces in order to start a new phase of World War II against the Soviet Union, and the Soviet annexation of Hokkaido would only have helped his cause.

The American bombing campaign, which had already burned out every major Japanese urban center besides Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Kyoto, would have continued for the duration. By August, 1945 that campaign had switched to the use of incendiary weapons and had killed and injured far more Japanese civilians than the two atomic bombs would. The lack of targets almost certainly would have led to the Americans targeting smaller towns, which were overflowing with refugees from the destroyed cities.

There is no question in my mind: the Japanese leadership had the will to continue fighting, and if they had taken things to their logical conclusion the total number of deaths would have approached and probably exceeded a million far sooner than anyone projected, with American deaths easily reaching the casualty figures of either one of the atomic bombings, if not both combined.

[Socal31]

50. What?

We had to invade Japan and dismantle the military. What planet are you from?

[lynne]

23. God Speed, Mr. Tibbets

I am not going to attempt to second guess the decision to bomb as I'm sure it wasn't a decision taken lightly by anyone. Tibbets and his crew merely performed the duties assigned to them that day. Yes, many died but many were also saved. No doubt that there are quite a few of us here that may have never been born had Tibbets failed. Our grandfathers and fathers may have never returned from the proposed invasion of Japan had Tibbets not successfully piloted the Enola Gay that day.

He has my thanks and my respect and I extend my sympathies to his family.

:patriot:

[rockymountaindem]

30. Rest in peace

It's sad when people with his wealth of experience and the insight that comes with it pass away.

[bluestateguy]

34. My condolences to the family of this patriot

Make no mistake about it: the invasion of Japan would have been every bit as much of a bloodbath as the dropping of those bombs produced. In addition, the Japanese or Germans would not have hesitated to use such a device on us if they had the chance.

[Islander Expat]

38. He had a good long time to ponder what he did...

now he has to go upstairs and answer for it.

[D-U-D-E]

39. RIP Mr. Tibbets

I had the honor of meeting Mr. Tibbets on a few occasions. He was a friend of my Grandfather. While they were both WWII aviators, they knew each other from work later in their careers.

Needless to say I agree with those who say that he followed orders. if not him, someone else's name would be etched in history. No doubt the bombing killed hundreds of thousands, and its legacy continues to do so, but ended the worst war in world history. Remember there were American POW's in Japan, so ignoring a final assault or action on Mainland Japan wasn't going to be sufficient.

[Thickasabrick]

42. I'm sorry - I don't think he was brave at all. He actually did a

reenactment of his deed..like it was something to be proud of. No wonder the Japanese were pissed off about it. If you can kill 80,000 people knowing a good majority of them are women and kids..and still sleep at night, I don't consider you human. I'm glad he's dead.

[dingaling]

44. I agree with that.

If he had refused he would have been my hero. Following orders were what germans did at auschwitz also. That doesnt allow you to commit an act that can kill a large number of innocent people. Hiding behind patriotism is what people who cannot face up to their actions do. He should have at least shown some regret for an act that killed 80000 people at one time. The victorious in any war spin things because their version of history is not challenged. But murder is murder. And that is what it was.

[bry2k]

47. Hiroshima & Nagasaki were military targets...

...and the "innocent" people who lived and worked there were very much a part of the empire's brutal military industrial complex. Those targets were very carefully selected to maximize destruction to the military and political power of Japan's war machine while minimizing the destruction to Japan's cultural and civilian infrastructure. If we hadn't dropped both of those bombs, particularly #2, which proved to the Japanese military that we could do it repeatedly and that they had no chance of victory, then a notable percentage of us would never have been born because our fathers & grandfather's & great-grandfathers wouldn't have survived the bloody invasion of Japan. That is a fact! And what of Japan's citizens if we hadn't dropped the bomb? You only need to look to many of the battles of the Pacific (which requires reading a few history books or at least a few hours on Wikipedia) to see that the civilians of the Japanese mainland would have died fighting down to the last man, woman and child, using nothing more than sticks and stones if necessary, to obey the orders of their god-like military leaders. There would have been nothing left of them in the end, not to mention the harm to our own forces. The bomb saved millions of lives. People who debate that reality with their ignorant revisionist views of history fall squarely into the same category as the nuts who debate the existence of the holocaust, and global-warming.

[JVS]

43. RIP

[kurth]

46. Neither villain nor hero

No worse than those who firebombed Tokyo and Dresden.

[The Traveler]

52. So I had this professor

who worked on the Manhattan project. Like Feynman he was a data monkey at the time, just a kid working his way through. And I asked him one fine summer night, while we sat on the roof of the physics building at Ga. Tech, smoking dope and watching the stars wheel 'round, I asked him how he felt about it all. And he smiled sadly at me and just said, "Sometimes, there are no good choices."