Details here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/obituaries/02tibbets.html?_r=0
He was thrilled by flight, and though his father wanted him to be a doctor, his mother encouraged him to pursue his dream.
He was ordered to find the best pilots, navigators, bombardiers and supporting crewmen and mold them into a unit that would deliver that bomb from a B-29.
Kia Tibbets said her grandfather would be cremated. “He didn’t want a funeral because he didn’t want to take the chance of protesters or anyone defacing a headstone,” she said.
“I viewed my mission as one to save lives,” he said. “I didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor. I didn’t start the war, but I was going to finish it.”
Because of him, my father survived the war, I am alive, my sons are alive, and my grandchildren are alive.
May he rest in peace now reunited with his dad.
Even in his final years, when Tibbets would speak at the Sandia Atomic Museum, then located on the grounds of Kirtland Air Force Base, it was always SRO. A common refrain was, “You saved my father’s/grandfather’s life.”
the pilot of the Enola Gay was his father and died years ago