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Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, better known as the man who piloted the Enola Gay during the bombing of Hiroshima, became a well-known figure in the United States at the end of the Second World War. Despite his fame, Tibbets asked that upon his death he receive no funeral or gravestone. Paul Tibbets started his career as an abdominal surgeon before enlisting in the US Army Air Corps. He initially served for three years, qualifying as a pilot in 1938, and opted to stay on active duty when the US entered the Second World War. While he is best known for...

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thenewsstar/obituary.aspx?n=paul-warfield-tibbets&pid=182059677&fhid=20705 Death of the son of the Enola Gay pilot in Monroe, LA

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, shortly after 8:00 a.m. local time, a lone American B-29 was conducting what seemed to be a reconnaissance flight at high altitude over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. At about 16 minutes after 8:00, the aircraft released an object over the centre of town. Attached to parachutes, the object floated down slowly enough to give the four-engine Boeing Superfortress time to turn and lumber out of the airspace. The atom bomb exploded at about 1,900 feet above the centre of Hiroshima. The devastation was cataclysmic. Immediate casualties, dead and injured, numbered approximately 115,000....

Theodore Van Kirk is sitting at his desk in a detached bungalow in the gated community outside Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives. The room is cluttered with boxes, trinkets, shelves full of books on wartime history and photographs of planes on the walls...

Dear Mark, Right until his death this week, General Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, told everyone that he slept with a clear conscience every night. You wrote a very powerful column on Hiroshima's lessons for the Iraq war a couple of years ago. Could you reprint it? J Davenport Mississauga, Ontario MARK SAYS: Well, it was not General Tibbets' bomb that prompted the column but its companion. But, whether Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the point of the column remains: Iraqi wacky woo from The Irish Times, August 1st 2005 Until 60 years ago, all Nagasaki meant to most...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Paul Tibbets, the pilot and commander of the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, died Thursday. He was 92.

"COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted for six decades after the war that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night."

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night. Tibbets died at his Columbus home, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months. Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said. Tibbets' historic mission in the plane...

When I was a child, my mother had one of the early coffee table books on display in the living room. “The Family of Man” (http://www.amazon.com/Family-Man-Greatest-Photographic-Exhibition/dp/B000J1AMR6/ref=sr_1_1/103-5108515-2439061?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193940207&sr=1-1) was, to a kid in grade school in the mid-50s, a fascinating book. There was little TV in those days, few magazines for kids, and of course, no video games, computers, or cell phones. This book’s 500 or so black and white pictures, taken from many magazines, showed a vast array of people from many nations engaged in a wide variety of activities. I spent hours and hours staring at the pictures, fascinated. I...

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...

Sixty years ago today, Hiroshima, Japan, became the first target of an atomic bomb, with Nagasaki the second target three days later. Thus, a war that lasted four years was ended in four days. To those who decry the devastation caused by President Truman's decision to develop and detonate this awesome weapon, I remind them of the lives saved, not lost. I'm very proud of the fact that my uncle was not only a member of the Enola Gay that dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, the first atomic bomb in history, but he was actually the bombardier. The bottom line,...

The mind of the pilot whose B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb often seems more prisoner than resident of his bantamweight body wracked by injury, ailments and 90 years of living. In the months before today’s 60 th anniversary of his mission to Hiroshima, Paul Tibbets was hobbled by a pair of spills that fractured two vertebrae. For a while, his appetite disappeared, his weight dropped alarmingly, and he railed against the fates torturing him in his waning years. "I’ve never been incapacitated a damned day of my life," he groused two months ago, daily downing enough OxyContin to make...

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...

<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- It carried the most destructive weapon of World War II and now the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, is set to go on display at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.</p>