Jasher

U.S. pilot who dropped Hiroshima bomb dies - report

Thu Nov 1, 2007 2:02pm EDT





CHICAGO (Reuters) - Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the U.S. bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan on Aug. 6, 1945, died on Thursday at age 92, a newspaper reported.

Tibbets, who died at his home in Columbus, Ohio, had suffered strokes and was ill from heart failure, the Columbus Dispatch said in its online edition.

An experienced pilot who had flown some of the first bombing missions over Germany during World War Two, Tibbets was a 30-year-old colonel commanding the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber named for his mother.

After a six-hour flight to Japan, Tibbets' crew dropped the bomb, code-named "Little Boy," over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m.
"If Dante had been with us on the plane, he would have been terrified," Tibbets said later. "The city we had seen so clearly in the sunlight a few minutes before was now an ugly smudge. It had completely disappeared under this awful blanket of smoke and fire."

The bomb instantly killed about 78,000 people. By the end of 1945, the number of dead had reached about 140,000 out of an estimated population of 350,000.

Three days later the United States dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, bringing World War Two to an end.

Tibbets said in interviews he did not regret the decision to drop the bomb.

He became a brigadier general before leaving the military in 1966. Later he was president of Executive Jet Aviation, a Columbus-based international air-taxi service, the newspaper said.

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Boanerges

That man saved an estimated 1,000,000 Americna causualties. He was and is a hero.

violet

Jasher

That is one of the major arguements for the last five years about the Iraq war. The argument is about Preemption - it saves lives in the long run. Pacifists and peacemakers will never consent to any casualties in a preemption. Roosevelt ran his presidency based on the polls - just like Clinton did -that is why we had 55,000,000 casualties in WWII.

Boanerges

SBT- Sad But True!