Posted on 08/05/2016 11:46:13 PM PDT by mkjessup
As a teenager I remember crawling around inside the Enola Gay during the air show at Bolling AFB in the early to mid fifties.
Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Colonel. Don’t remember if it was full or Lt. Col.
“Gay” was Tibbetts’ mother’s middle name. Would the LGBTPDQs demand that Mom’s name be changed, as well? That USED TO BE an honorable, utilitarian word, with only pure and happy connotations.
P.S. Tibbetts was a higher rank than I’d guessed. He made full “Bird” Colonel early in 1945.
Bockscar, the Nagasaki bomber is in Dayton, ohio at the USAF museum. Nagasaki was a backup. The primary was Kokura. It was avoided due to weather conditions. Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong on the Nagaski flight. A fuel pump broke on Bockscar, which meant they couldn’t use one of their bomb bay tanks. The recon/photo planes missed the rendevous. Kokura was obscured by cloud. Bockscar wnt through several passes before dropping the bomb because the weather at Nagasaki was iffy as well. Finally, Bockscar landed on Okinawa instead of Tinian, literally running on fumes.
CC
It was either drop the Bomb or prepare for an actual invasion of Japan that could have cost over one million American lives and at least ten times that among the Japanese. And that invasion would have resulted in the Japanese forever resenting us.
I’m thinking a collection of stories like the two of you have would make an interesting documentary on the History channel.
J. Robert Oppenheimer believed that fifty atomic bombs would be needed to defeat Japan. Scientists and military figures considered them as nothing more than large-scale conventional weapons. Each atomic bomb could accomplish what took a week with conventional bombing and, as the radiation effect was still unknown, there seemed no reason to withhold using them. Members of the 509th were informed that their stay on Tinian would be a long one.
http://www.atomicheritage.org/location/tinian-island
I remember the day——I was almost 13.
All the kids in my Boston neighborhood marched, banging pots and pans,celebrating.
.
June 6, 1944 - D-Day.
August 6, 1945 - Bomb Day - Hiroshima.
Yes, I’m well aware of the origin of the Enola Gay’s name, but facts don’t matter to liberals with an agenda to push and history to rewrite.
How many innocent and noble gays were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the evil atomic bomb? That alone should justify removing the “Gay” word from the aircraft’s name. /s
On August 5, 1945, a B-29 was maneuvered over a bomb loading pit and then taxied to Runway Able at North Field. At 2:45am on August 6, the B-29 - piloted by Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Army Air Force, who had named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay - took off. On August 6 at 8:15 am Hiroshima time, the Little Boy bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. A minute later, the bomb exploded.
The great destruction of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not immediately spur Japan to surrender. On August 14 it was decided that an additional attack was necessary. Hundreds of B-29s from Guam, Saipan, and Tinian - loaded with powerful Torpex bombs - converged on the Japanese city of Koromo to deliver the last attack of the war. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally the next day.
http://www.atomicheritage.org/location/tinian-island
Here in a little info with some dates that might put your grandfather in context.
http://www.atomicarchive.com/History/mp/p4s23.shtml
If it’s August, it must be time to whip this dead horse again.
Roswell.
My mom also worked those Kaiser shipyards as a secretary.
She met my dad at a cafe in Oakland.
Nope, that’s it...no secret squirrel crap, just sayin’... that’s how I came to be...WWII ship building.
Time for the Liberals to come out of the woodwork, weep, wail, get glassy eyed, foam at the mouth and fall down and get skinned up because we used TWO BOMBS to do what two hundred planes loaded with 20,000lb of high explosives or incendiary bombs could have done without ending the war.
Wonder how many of these jerks would have volunteered to be in the first wave of landing craft going into a still at war Japan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alberta
Project Albert was a fast moving, complicated project. Lots of interesting information here.
3 “bomb assembly kits” were shipped to Tinian per the above source. Another source indicated the 3rd unit was held in reserve in CA and/or test assembled in CA. These (kits) were complete independent bases, buildings for administration, assembly and operations, all the equipment, scientific gear, etc EVERYTHING.
Two were assembled. On sept 7 disassembly began and they were dropped in the ocean for security reasons.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.