Gen. Paul Tibbets turns 90 (where is the media?)

MiddlesBoro Daily News ^ | 2/19/05

[Borges]

Preparing for take-off

Bob Cardin and his crew tow the Glacier Girl out of her home hanger Friday morning. The P-38 plane is due to make a special appearance in Atlanta, Ga., for the 90th birthday of General Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

Cardin says this is the 'biggest' event that Glacier Girl has done yet and CNN news will be doing an exclusive interview with Roy Shoffner, the plane's owner. The event will also feature a scaled down reenactment of Operation Bolero - the same operation that put her under the ice. The interview was expected to air Saturday on CNN

[Borges]

Why hasn't some enterprising AP reporter done a story on the General on his 90th birthday today? He certainly played an important part in world history. All I could find was this trifle.

[MEG33]

He helped save a lot of our fathers and sons. May he have a wonderful birthday.

[SlowBoat407]

I remember coming across the Enola Gay during a foray into a Smithsonian warehouse in their Silver Hill facility about ten years ago. At first I couldn't see any writing on the nose when I looked in the window from outside. It was just a silhouette of what I could tell was a huge plane under restoration. When I opened the door, the sunlight fell directly on the nose and illuminated that famous name. I got a chill and just stood in awe of encountering real history. I'll never forget that.

[Calpernia]

The P-38 plane is due to make a special appearance in Atlanta, Ga., for the 90th birthday of General Paul Tibbets, the pilot who flew the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.

[WorkingClassFilth]

A bump, a salute and a 'thank you, Sir!' for General Tibbets on his B-day.

[RayChuang88]

He helped save a lot of our fathers and sons.

A major understatement.

The Americans were preparing a massive invasion force to land on the island of Kyushu, and the British was in the process of working up Tiger Force as part of that initial landing operation, Operation Olympic. If we had to invade Japan the death toll on both sides would have been nothing short of breathtaking, given how fanatical the Japanese fought on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. As such, the dropping of the atomic bombs actually ended saving over a million American lives and possibly 8-10 times that in Japanese lives.

[oh8eleven]

Happy Birthday General and Semper Fi ...

[clintonh8r]

For he's a jolly good fellow!!!

Happy birthday, General!

[Valin]

He saved my brother-in-law.

[Borges]

I've talked to people on various sides of this issue and the other tack goes that the surrender of Japan was imminent and Truman made the decision to drop the bomb to 1. Test the bomb. 2 Scare the Soviet Union. Anyone believe that? My government teacher in high school was a John Birch-er who seemed to think that way.

[RexBeach]

God bless him!

I didn't know that he was still with us! Good news!

[Valin]

where's is the media?

Two Words....Michael Jackson
http://news.google.com/news?q=%22Michael+Jackson%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=dn

[BluH2o]

Met Paul Tibbets last September at a local air show. He was signing copies of his updated book Enola Gay, which I purchased and subsequently read ... an interesting read. What isn't generally known of Paul Tibbets is that he was a squadron leader in the 8th Air Force, leading the advance group, when they made their first bombing run over Nazi occupied Europe in August 1942. Later that same year he flew General Eisenhower down to Morocco to meet up with President Roosevelt and General Patton, in the weeks immediately after Operation Torch. Paul Tibbets, who knew Patton when both were stationed at Fort Bragg, they struck up an acquaintanceship due to a shared interest in skeet shooting, which led to Tibbets piloting Patton's small private airplane. Patton had the idea that if he could observe his tanks from the air he could better direct them on the ground ... so he purchased the aircraft with his own money. Anyway, Paul Tibbets knew personally many of the main players in WWII ... all this before Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

[Condor51]

***Anyone believe that?***

No. At least not anyone with a functioning brain.

1. The A-bomb was already tested at Trinity Site on July 16, 1945.
   
2. When Truman told Stalin that 'we' had a weapon/bomb to end all bombs (words to that effect) at Potsdam, he already KNEW of it because the Manhattan Project was compromised and littered with dozens of Soviet spies.
   
3. As to Japan's surrender being "imminent"; I've seen that revisionist BS tripe spewed on the History Channel and that's all it is - revisionist BS tripe.

   In fact wait till Aug 6h and it'll be spewed again. They do it every year.

[4CJ]

Happy Birthday General Tibbets!

[FreedomPoster]

<*Ding!*><*Ding!*><*Ding!*>

We have a winner!

Spot-on, sir.

[arbee4bush]

I wrote to Gen Tibbets after reading Duty-A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War by Bob Greene. I thanked him for his service. He wrote back and I treasured that email--still have it :)

Happy Birthday Gen Tibbets!

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Tibbits is not only a real American hero but a gentleman of the first order. God bless him and his crew for their servce during World War II!

[Tallguy]

Events have a momentum all their own. Yes, I believe that the Japanese were teetering on the brink of surrender. However, they were also on the brink of a military coup. If the US Army & Marines had invaded Kyushu, I don't think that the surrender would have happened -- they would have resisted the invasion.

Their were those in the US Navy that advocated a blockade, but blockades are not decisive (in the near-term) and are seldom satisfactory. Can you imagine Harry Truman -- an untried President -- selling the idea of a blockade to an American public that still remembered Pearl Harbor & Bataan? I can't.

Also, the blockade option would have had to be a 'Distant' Blockade given the Kamikaze threat to US ships. The better portion of the Imperial Japanese Army was in Manchuria & China -- not Japan. Those troops would be steadily shifted to the Home Islands to defend against the US invasion threat. If the blockade failed to produce the desired results, then Japan would have been in a far stronger position to defend itself in '46 or '47. Think about how the Dunkirk evacuation strengthened Britain's defensive options and apply this to Japan.

Finally, the Manhattan Project was a serious investment for a nation at war. It is almost inconceivable that a wartime weapons project would be cancelled without some battlefield use. That leaves 'Demonstration' vs. 'Employment'. This has been fairly well covered, but I will say this, who knew just how bad the radiation-effect would be before-the-fact? I know that there were some scientists who understood the problem, but their were others that discounted it. Hiroshima & Nagasaki ended that debate.

[Leatherneck_MT]

A Marine Corps Salute to General Tibbets. May you have a wonderful birthday sir.