Enola Gay Hiroshima pilot dies aged 92

[John Bevilaqua]

5.30pm GMT

Hiroshima pilot dies aged 92 Fred Attewill and agencies

Thursday November 1, 2007

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.

Up to 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the explosion.

Mr Tibbets requested no funeral or headstone because he feared they would attract protesters. In 2005, he said he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he had enjoyed flying during the war.

He always maintained that his conscience was clear over Hiroshima. "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.

"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war ... you use anything at your disposal. I sleep clearly every night."

Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated on August 6, the US dropped a second bomb on Nagaski, killing an estimated 40,000 people.

On August 15, the Japanese emperor braodcast his country's surrender, saying the war situation had "developed, not necessarily to Japan's advantage".

Mr Tibbets, whose plane was named after his mother, had enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1937, and finally left the US air force as a brigadier general in 1966.

He later moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.

In 1995, he described a proposed 50th anniversary Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington as a "damn big insult".

The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have examined the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of the target. Veterans' groups objected, saying the proposed display paid too much attention to Japan's suffering and too little to its brutality during and before the second world war. They said the museum had underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion.

Edited November 1, 2007 by John Bevilaqua

[Tim Gratz]

And why is this in the JFK Assassination Debate?

Was the "alternative plan" to drop an A-bomb on Dllas?

John is flooding the Forum with stuff not related to the assassination.

Edited November 1, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[John Bevilaqua]

Searching through the historical record a little deeper we find that McCloy discussed the disadvantages upon the US Nuclear position that could be compromised at the Paris Summit (to be held the following May) in November of 1959. That Summit would never happen after Francis Gary Powers was downed while flying over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960 (after a former Marine radar operator named Lee Harvey Oswald had defected to the Soviet Union and threatened to provide information to the Soviets about the U-2).

I had forgotten about this little tidbit. Why then would Otto F. Otepka and Frances Knight even have allowed

Oswald back into this country without questioning him, examining him or arresting him for possibly leaking

the U-2 classified information? Otepka would later be fired for leaking classified information during the

security clearance hearings of Walt Whitman Rostow. Maybe Otepka believed that leaking classified information

for a cause you believed in was justified in his own case. Why not in Oswald's case then?

Because Oswald was an asset of US Intel and they had invested much in his training as a programmed assassin.

And they had plans about his ultimate utilization. Why would they hand him over to de Mohrenshcildt who

ran assassins in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and even from Harbin, Manchuria into Soviet Russia? Now don't get

all huffy snitzed. Whether or not Oswald fired a shot and whether or not he hit anyone is NOT EVEN AN ISSUE here.

He DID kill Corporal Schrand.