Pilot of plane that dropped atomic bomb dies at 92-Tibbets says he never regretted grave mission

TIBBETS

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) ‘ 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 named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of World War II and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.

The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton ‘Little Boy’ bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.

Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.

‘I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing,’ Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. ‘We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible.’

Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.

‘I’m not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I’m proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did,’ he said in a 1975 interview. ‘You’ve got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. … You use anything at your disposal.’

He added: ‘I sleep clearly every night.’

After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide.

‘They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions,’ he said. ‘At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon.’

Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.

But his role in the bombing brought him fame ‘ and infamy ‘ throughout his life.

In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.

He said the display ‘was not intended to insult anybody,’ but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.

Tibbets told the Dispatch in 2005 he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war. Newhouse, Tibbets’ longtime friend, confirmed that Tibbets wanted to be cremated, but he said relatives had not yet determined how he would be laid to rest.