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We knew it was going to kill people right and left. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. "I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. This is a real human being who changed the course of the world inexorably on that August morning." "I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said in a 1975 interview.įilmmaker Ken Burns said Tibbets' life "helps to take this incredible, gigantic event and personalize it. 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,'Ê" said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."
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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. Hundreds of other WWII artifacts are being auctioned at Bonhams, from American flags flown at Normandy at D-Day to Japanese military maps of Iwo Jima.COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who etched his mother's name - Enola Gay, who is buried in Marion County - 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. Steven Lewis said he’s putting the WWII documents up for sale ahead of his plans to publish his father’s manuscript of wartime experiences in a book at a later date. The other Lewis items for auction include personal photographs from the war and his hand-drawn diagram of the Hiroshima bombing run showing the bomb blast’s expected shock wave range and the evasive flight path the Enola’s Gay would take after detonation. Enola Gay navigator Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving crew member, died in Georgia in 2014. Robert Lewis died in Virginia in 1983, Tibbets in 2007 in Ohio. Japan surrendered six days later, ending the war. Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, another U.S. “People don’t realize how many times he flew aboard the Enola Gay,” Steven Lewis said. But Tibbets only flew the Enola Gay a couple of times, while Lewis had piloted the aircraft 16 times during test flights leading up to the Hiroshima mission.
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The move made Tibbets a household name after his crew completed the world’s first atomic bombing mission, which destroyed much of the Japanese city and killed tens of thousands of its citizens. Paul Tibbets was also the pilot of the Enola Gay, relegating the lower-ranked Lewis to co-pilot. “Any records of that mission would be significant.”Īs commander of the Hiroshima mission, Col. “The Enola Gay was the most significant aircraft of World War Two,” said Larry Starr, collections manager at the American Airpower Museum in Farmingdale, New York.