Posted on 11/01/2007 8:43:44 AM PDT by snippy_about_it
Paul Tibbets Jr., who flew the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb — on Hiroshima, Japan — died this morning at his East Side home. He was 92.
Tibbets had suffered small strokes and heart failure in his final years and had been in hospice care.
He was born in Quincy, Ill., but grew up in Miami after his father moved the family there.
See link for complete story. Tibbets fell in love with flight and, at age 12, volunteered as a backseat assistant to a biplane pilot, dropping leaflets for the Curtiss Candy Co. at fairs, carnivals and other public gatherings.
He joined the Army Air Corps in 1938.
(Excerpt) Read more at dispatch.com ...
It’s sad how fast the WWII generation is dying. I did meet General Tibbets’ grandson about 10-15 years ago. Last I heard he was following in his grandfather’s footsteps and had worked his way up to squadron commander in the Air Force.
CAVU, General Tibbets.
He doesn't look anything like Paul Newman (who portrayed Groves in 'Fatman and Little Boy').
I worked 3 years in Richland, WA. There are pictures of General Groves all over town. Eastside is a whole lot different than Seattle/Olympia...
I’ll have to check that out. I’m kinda partial to Seabees, but that’s just a family tradition.
What’s cold about honoring his mother?
LOL. Funny you should say that. I’ve ALWAYS been partial to the Navy. Yet I married a wonderful ground pounder.
My mother was in the Navy, father was in the Army, brother and sister in the AF.
I am married to an Army guy. I love ‘em all but have a special place in my heart for the Navy.
Alec Baldwin didn’t look at all like Jimmy Doolittle in that stupid Pearl Harbor flick either.
My mother and her siblings were fortunate. The way that poor family lived reminded me of how they lived, in a cave shelter dug out of volcanic sand by her grandfather, during the war. Afterwards, their neighborhood had survived the firebombing relatively intact and they were able to just move back. A lot of families did not have that luxury and it doesn’t surprise me that some may have taken longer, if ever, to bounce back.
What happened to Masako was pretty typical how certain social strata were treated. I don’t think that if she came from a ‘good’, ie, middle-class and/or ethnically pure, family she would not have had to work in a factory at her age. Having known plenty of ladies like her, she must have been a lovely girl and a real survivor.
Wow! Thanks! I needed that.:D
RIP Col Tibbets. You did your duty magnificently. You are a hero.
Thanks,for helping alot of young men get the chance to go home and grow old!
fyi
High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
But the difference between US and most of the rest of the world, when we win we do not demolish the people, we resurrect them.
And I just hope that that counts for something someday, say if a hildabest gets into office and the nation fractures apart
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