Posted on 09/11/2019 5:55:57 AM PDT by mairdie
Never-before-seen photos of the aircraft crew that dropped the world's first atomic bomb receiving a heroes' welcome upon returning from the historic mission have come to light.
The black and white photos show the 12 airmen posing before and after they deployed the B-29 bomber 'Enola Gay' to drop the devastating bomb on Hiroshima in Japan.
One photo is of pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets being given an immediate gallantry decoration by a general after stepping off the aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
PING
Not just any general. This one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Spaatz
Carl Andrew Spaatz (born Spatz; June 28, 1891 – July 14, 1974), nicknamed “Tooey”, was an American World War II general. As commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe in 1944, he successfully pressed for the bombing of the enemy’s oil production facilities as a priority over other targets. He became Chief of Staff of the newly formed United States Air Force in 1947.
Thank you. I didn’t know that.
I’ve always wondered about the radiation from those explosions. When they tested the Trinity bomb in New Mexico in 1945, the Kodak facility in Rochester NY 2000 miles away lost a full day’s production of photographic film. It took them a few weeks to figure out what was happening and they later got advanced warning from the Army whenever a test was scheduled. It does bring up a number of serious questions though.
IIRC, Spatz would have been Curtis LeMay’s boss at that time.
The guys felt FINE about it —great, in fact. They were not wracked by gnawing guilt.
ONE crew member did give in to the temptations of greed and did several times accept invitation$ to give speeches in Japan. In those appearances he did jump through several of the guilt hoop$ they put in front of him. The Japanese media did grab those up and ran very far with them:
The guilting process that occurred in Germany was not imposed on Japan and when push comes to shove most Japanese, incredibly, do consider themselves as victims of WW2).
On the few occasions I read stuff about the crew members in Japan, they usually single this one guy out and they might throw in something brief about this one guy’s supposed regret.
But in fact the mission went textbook and they didn’t indulge in the Guilt Orgy that so many lefties and revisionist Japanese (and American) historians would prefer.
Betcha it brings a lot more than that.
To this day in Japan, the historic significance of Dec. 7th is unknown.
Whenver I mention it (usually on that very day) it always takes my Japanese listener by surprise, though very fairly they never relish it. Meanwhile, of course the exact dates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are famous.
The exact history of Nanking is not dwelled upon, other than the extremely tiny Chinese community in Japan, some honest lefties and the extreme right, which admonishes that it never happened, or barely.
School textbooks in Japan mostly DO conceed that Nanking happened, but they do not go into the actual details.
The war in the Pacific is usually summed up with the word “advance”, i.e., Japanese forces advanced into China and the Pacific.
Do you have a source for this incident?
Do you have a source for this incident?
FYI
Scientists from Tennessee Eastman Company, a Kodak chemical plant, were dispatched to be part of the team of engineers and scientists building the Oak Ridge facility that processed the uranium.
The father of my friend was an Eastman chemical engineer that wanted to be released so he could join the Navy. He was released and given a commission whereupon his duty station became Oak Ridge with his civilian Eastman colleagues
Perhaps some one visiting freom Rochester brought some radioactive material home
“School textbooks in Japan mostly DO conceed that Nanking happened, but they do not go into the actual details.”
The Japanese were every bit as bad as the Nazis. Medical experiments on living POWs, unbelievably brutal treatment of Chinese citizens, mass summary executions, biological warfare experiments on civilian populations, mass murders of POWs, the list goes on and on.
We didn’t hang near enough of them after the war.
L
I gotta call BS on that. No way.
I met Paul Tibbets and his navigator at an airshow in Florida.
I purchased the book he was selling , with his and his navigators autographs. He undertook a historic and necessary mission. Those that criticize the dropping of the A- Bombs show look up operation Olympia and see the projected casualties for the invasion of Japan.
The Purple hearts given out today are from the 500,000 purple hearts manufactured in 1945 , which were deemed the number needed to be kept on hand for the invasion of Kyushu alone. There are still 120,000 in stock.
The amazing thing about Nanking:
Very many Nanking managed to take refuge at WHAT safe place?
At the Nanking Consulate of.....Nazi Germany..!!
“Germany is an Axis ally of Japan, maybe they have some sway with Japan...”
That is what the refugees were thinking, and they were correct. People will HATE it, but was there a German Schindler in CHINA..?
Yes, JOHN RABE, and he did repeatedly turn away the Japanese at the front gates, who were very frank in what was going to happen to the thousands of Chinese refugees inside.
He also established a Safe Zone:
He saved 200,000 innocent Chinese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe
There was an early 50’s Hollywood film about the dropping of Little Boy called “Above and Beyond”. Robert Taylor played Tibbets, and Eleanor Parker played his wife. The whole thrust of the film was that it was a brilliant and heroic operation. You’d never see that viewpoint in a movie about it today.
That is one heck of a WW2 vet scrapbook. $3k-$5k seems in the ball park. Especially with all this publicity. It would be a lot more valuable if it was from a mission crew member.
Cultural differences demanded it. The Japanese were ruthless towards their conquered enemies. Felt they were the lowest of the low for surrendering. The bomb settled it. Anyone who can get someone else to fly their plane into an american battleship has got to have a screw loose. Don’t bother asking for an explanation. They’d do it today.
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