![enola gay pilots regret enola gay pilots regret](https://www.fichier-pdf.fr/2014/01/27/sujets-histoire-des-arts/preview-sujets-histoire-des-arts-1.jpg)
Some chose to keep a low profile and others spoke out about their place in history. Almost all had something to say after the war. The 509th Composite Group was formed by the U.S. Army Air Force to deliver and deploy the first atomic bombs during World War II. The group was segregated from the rest of the military and trained in secret. Even those in the group only knew as much as they needed to know in order to perform their duties. The group deployed to Tinian in 1945 with 15 B-29 bombers, flight crews, ground crews, and other personnel, a total of about 1770 men. The mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (special mission 13) involved seven planes, but the one we remember was the Enola Gay. Captain Theodore Van Kirk, NavigatorĪir Force captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk did not know the destructive force of the nuclear bomb before Hiroshima. He was 24 years old at that time, a veteran of 58 missions in North Africa. Paul Tibbets told him this mission would shorten or end the war, but Van Kirk had heard that line before. Van Kirk felt the bombing of Hiroshima was worth the price in that it ended the war before the invasion of Japan, which promised to be devastating to both sides. But once upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan, on a Sunday morning - Augand a bomb fell. I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. In 2005, Van Kirk came as close as he ever got to regret. I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste, such a loss of life.
![enola gay pilots regret enola gay pilots regret](https://lh6.ggpht.com/_xPUSJscPh7g/TP5n2kb18qI/AAAAAAAAI6E/9f5dlmQHsx8/flotib_thumb[2].jpg)
We unleashed the first atomic bomb, and I hope there will never be another. weapon would explode with a yield of 300 kilotons of TNT”.I pray that we have learned a lesson for all time. In comparison, today’s thermonuclear weapons are much more powerful. It is estimated that these two bombs killed roughly 200,000 people in the near term, with more dying in the following years from cancer. One frightening aspect of nukes today is that they’re many times more powerful than the Little Boy bomb: “The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were comparable to explosions of about 15 to 20 kilotons of TNT. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible”. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. “I knew when I got the assignment”, he told a reporter in 2005, “it was going to be an emotional thing. In a 1975 interview, Paul Tibbets said: “I’m proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did. Tibbets, en route to Guam, felt a 2.5g shockwave driven before a kaleidoscopic pillar of smoke and debris. 31,000 feet above (9,500 meters), and 10 and a half miles away from them, Paul W. local time, poised above Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge, Little Boy dropped. Thomas Wilson Ferebee was the Bombardier aboard the Enola Gay.
![enola gay pilots regret enola gay pilots regret](https://assets.rbl.ms/19041568/980x.jpg)
The bomb, named “Little Boy”, was anything but snout-nosed, and weighing in at 9,700 pounds (4,400 kg), it resembled nothing more than an obese metal baseball bat.Īt 8:15 a.m. Answer (1 of 8): This is such a popular question I have combined my research into one boilerplate answer and post it every time someone asks about the crew. Fred Bock, has been on display at the museum since 1961. The B-29 bomber, named for one of its pilots, Capt. Sweeney, 75, of Milton, Mass., said he loves the Bockscar like you love your oldest pair of slippers. Rather than isobutyl methacrylate or its more famous kin, napalm, this bomb was packed with two masses of highly enriched uranium-235. Parts of the Enola Gay are to be displayed this summer at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington. Unlike the bombs with which the US Air Force had scorched Japan for roughly a year, this bomb was not filled with the usual incendiaries. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The Enola Gay was a bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line. Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from the Enola Gay’s cockpit to get reporters to stand clear of the propellers prior to engine start, before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima.