Posted on 02/26/2024 3:55:49 AM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, better known as the man who piloted the Enola Gay during the bombing of Hiroshima, became a well-known figure in the United States at the end of the Second World War. Despite his fame, Tibbets asked that upon his death he receive no funeral or gravestone.
Paul Tibbets started his career as an abdominal surgeon before enlisting in the US Army Air Corps. He initially served for three years, qualifying as a pilot in 1938, and opted to stay on active duty when the US entered the Second World War. While he is best known for his service in the Pacific Theater, Tibbets first served on bombing missions in North Africa and France. He was also the personal pilot for Gen. George Patton from 1940-41.
By the fall of 1943, Tibbets was recalled to serve as a test pilot during the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, during which he found that the bomber was 7,000 pounds lighter - and its performance improved - if its armor plating and armaments were removed. After a year, he was tasked with retraining other pilots in the 17th Bombardment Operational Training Wing (Very Heavy).
In May 1945, Paul Tibbets and his men were transferred to Tinian, where they ran traditional bombing raids against Japanese-controlled islands while training with atomic bomb prototypes. When the 509th were given the go ahead to bomb Japan, Tibbets took over as pilot of the bomber that would drop Little Boy, the name given to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. He named the aircraft Enola Gay, after his mother.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Most people do not realize that absolute fact. There was no transportation in Japan by 1945.. The rice harvest would not have been distributed.
Yup.
Good points.
Now the official “line” from the Left, is that the Japs were about to surrender anyway, because the Soviets declared war on Japan, and the US just wanted to stop the Soviets from getting Japan.
People who complain about ending the war with atomic bombs also discount the fact that thousands of Chinese citizens were being killed and starved to death every day the war was allowed to continue.
>Very smart insightful man<
I met Gen Tibbets and his wife in a hotel lounge in Orlando. He was one of the most pleasant and gentle men I have ever met. You could tell he was at peace with God.
I purposely didn’t want to talk about the elephant in the room and he seemed to appreciate that. Just a pleasant conversation about....stuff. His wife was a real sweetie for an older gal.
He deserves to rest in peace.
EC
“…during which he found that the bomber was 7,000 pounds lighter - and its performance improved - if its armor plating and armaments were removed.”
Brilliant and astute observation.
My Dad was a Battling Bastard of Bataan, did the Death March and spent four years in a Jap POW death camp.
“We ain't got no mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam . . .”
One uncle built bombers, another was a Seabee, the third cut beryllium in Los Alamos. Without planning it they ended up doing all the things necessary to bring my Dad home.
Back in 1966 I was at the public library in Roswell NM and in a book about the dropping of the bomb someone had scrawled..”TIBBETS! MURDERER!”
Someone else had also written a two page defense of what he did.
My dad, in 1945, had been returned from Europe after the German Surrender to begin training for the invasion of Japan. He told me that when they got news of the first A-bomb on Hiroshima all the soldiers breathed a sigh of relief as they knew the war was almost over.
Interesting note I first found out when in the USAF, after the dropping of the two a-bombs the US continued to pound Japan with conventional bombs up till the surrender was signed.
Thanks to lack of manpower, Japan had had the worst rice harvest in 50 years in 1945. An estimated 4-8 million people (civilians no doubt) would have starved to death in Japan in the next 6 months without massive American food aid to prevent it.
Throughout the Asia/Pacific region an estimated 10,000 people were dying every single day the war continued. Most were civilians who died of hunger or disease having first been weakened by hunger. The death toll at Hiroshima was equivalent to letting the war continue for 2 more weeks. Bringing the war to an early conclusion saved a lot of lives....yes even if it meant nuking 2 cities.
Operation Meetinghouse - the firebombing of Tokyo - killed more people than were killed at Hiroshima. Curtis LeMay systematically burned down the 65 largest cities in Japan with the lone exception of Kyoto which was placed off limits due to its cultural and historic significance. Hell yes, the bombing campaign went on right til the end.
This was the loading area for the bombers and the bomb pits they had to make to load the bombs onto the bombers.
That way to Japan.
“Paul Tibbets started his career as an abdominal surgeon”? He operated on snowmen?
Click-bait headline.
Thee are my shots from Tinian. I was stationed on Guam in 99. The history on Guam, Saipan, and Tinian is really something. The Japs were all over the Pacific.
This is the lesson for Hamas and Israel. You bomb your enemy until THEY GIVE UP and formally surrender if there are any of them left. If they keep shooting, so do we. War is hell.
Was going through my fathers v mail during the war. We compiled all of them into two volumes. The letters in June and July were filled with comments preparing his parents and girlfriend (later to be my mom). Reassuring them that before he would be sent to the Pacific he would probably get a furlough since he had been overseas since Nov of ‘42.
Unexamined by historians, is what the American attitude would have been regarding the loss of 2 million of our sons, husbands, and fathers.
I think we would have wound up applying the "Carthage option" to Japan: total genocide.
Does anyone here seriously disagree?
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