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 ...
I wonder how long before they start forcing past heroes to be re-interned.
Sun Tzu said that the true objective of the general, is the destruction of the enemy’s willingness to fight you.
Yes to your note on the headline. All of journalism, activism (but I repeat myself) and politics is about not just about exploiting drama but in creating drama where none exists.
Yeah I noticed that as well. They phrased it that way to garner more readership.
Indeed
“Paul Tibbets started his career as an abdominal surgeon”? He operated on snowmen?
I don’t know what transportation you referrring to but the USS Barb was still sinking shipping and a train in 1945.
At the link below go to the paragraph near the bottom that starts with “Her 11th war patrol began”.
The Barb was busy to the end of the war.
https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/ships/submarines/barb-ss-220.html
I have a picture of the Enola Gay signed by Tibbets and his Navigator Van Kirk. It was taken by my Uncle who was a First Marine Raider who happened to be on Tinian during WW2. I don’t know how to post it here. I just cut and Paste.
Yep. Your war with your enemy does not stop until your enemy surrenders. Maybe a few minutes longer until we are good and convinced.
I can only imagine how many American lives Tibbet saved by dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Of course this has all been forgotten - and is not taught in American history classes any longer.
What I saw before I retired from teaching was “narratives” of how devastating the “evil bombs” were on the Japanese populations and how it affected them - not on how those bombs stopped what would have been an invasion.
I read a great narrative from a son whose father was on a ship headed to Japan for the invasion - 1/2 way there, they turned around because Japan had surrender - he said they celebrated all the way back to the U.S.
Yeah, BARB sank a train, and continued to wreak havoc on the Japs until the bitter end. OTOH, the big freighters and tankers the submarine service targeted earlier had largely ceased to exist. Jap shipbuilding simply could not keep up once the torpedo problems got fixed.
And his mother's name will live in history for many years.
My father was crewman on a battleship. Never talked about the war until a grandchild spewed some public school nonsense about it. He emotionally recalled how sailors assumed they would not survive conquering Japan, as they were first in line. God bless the A-bombs!
Nope, Janes grave should be like the one in Beetlejuice, with the big flashing arrow pointing at it.
Ain’t that the truth. Lol. Her casket would float away on a river of urine.
Ok, there was very little transportation left by 1945. You happy now?
Point being there was no way to transport any of the rice harvest to remaining population centers.
The Japanese were not about to surrender. They were ready for an invasion. They had built many kamikaze planes, made of wood and fabric and thus the proximity fuses wouldn’t detect them. They had the entire population trained to use spears. Their motto was “100 million souls for the Emperor.” They meant it. The bombs gave Hirohito an acceptable excuse to surrender. Even then a palace revolt nearly upended the surrender. Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.
My dad was training B25 pilots in Arizona and had just gotten his orders to the Pacific when the bombs were dropped. Good thing we had them.
He technically didn’t drop the bomb. That’d be the bombardier who hit the release button.
No Apology for Japanese Intransigence
The Kokutai principle played the decisive role for Japanese surrender in August 1945. The Japanese lived within a spiritual/political fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Subjected to this authority, average citizens forfeited individuality to a collective soul defining Japan and awaited the Empire’s decrees. With such national unity committed to Total War beneath the slogan of the “honorable sacrifice of 20 million Japanese lives” the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Hirohito foresaw inevitable defeat and appointed a Peace Faction. However, his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
As the political factions reached impasse the atomic bombs allowed Hirohito to speak the “Voice of the Crane” in the sweltering palace bunker. The bombs became a force of nature; equivalent to earthquakes or typhoons against which even a god/king was impotent. Only Imperial submission to such a catastrophe could match the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit because he held the heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War and Peace Factions could then relent, and no one would lose face. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the negotiations leading to surrender.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”. “When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix
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