The bomb exploded about 1,900 feet (580 meters) over the unsuspecting city. Inside the Enola Gay's bomb bay was "Little Boy."Īt 8:15 a.m., the Enola Gay's bay doors opened and "Little Boy" was dropped over Hiroshima. 6, a B-29 airplane named Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, according to Time magazine) took off from Tinian, an island roughly six hours from Hiroshima by air. Situated on a coastal plain, the city was an important manufacturing and military center - at least 40,000 military personnel were stationed in Hiroshima during the summer of 1945.įor these and other reasons, the city was selected as the first target of an atomic bomb attack. In 1945, Hiroshima, Japan, was a city of about 255,000 people that was largely untouched by the war, according to a paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.The damage caused by the Hiroshima bombing (Image credit: Getty/ Bettmann / Contributor) government later issued a formal apology. He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud. In 1976, he was criticized for reenacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air-taxi service until he retired in 1985.īut his role in the bombing brought him fame - and infamy - throughout his life. He retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., Tibbets spent most of his boyhood in Miami. Tibbets never expressed regret, viewing the assignment as his patriotic duty.īorn Feb. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war. Three days after Hiroshima, the United States let loose a second nuclear bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. That's the only way I could do it,'" he told Morning Edition. After I saw what I saw I was more convinced that they're gonna quit. They're not going to stand up to this thing. "I thought to myself, 'Gee, if we can be successful, we're going to prove to the Japanese the futility in continuing to fight because we can use those weapons on them. He had been given the assignment to get the planes ready nearly a year before in September 1944. "I never could have estimated that it would look like it looked." Tibbets was told by scientists that the bomb would explode with the equivalent force of 20,000 tons of TNT. It was devastating to take a look at it," Tibbets, who was a 30-year-old colonel when he flew the plane (named in honor of his mother) at 31,000 feet, said during the interview. And where we had seen the city on the way in, I (now) saw nothing but a bunch of boiling debris with fire and smoke and all of that kind of stuff. "At the same time I felt the taste of lead in my mouth. We made our turn, we leveled out, and at the time that that happened I saw the sky in front of me light up brilliantly with all kinds of colors. Then, the next thing that happened, the bomb had left the air plane and we all went into a very steep turn - for an airplane of that size and weight in those days at that altitude in particular."Īsked what it felt like when the 5-ton bomb dropped out of the plane, Tibbets said: "The nose lurched up - I mean it lurched dramatically - because if you immediately let 10,000 pounds out of the front, the nose has got to fly up.
"I gave them the countdown I did the seconds. "We all got ready for the final bomb run," Tibbets told author Bob Greene on National Public Radio's Morning Edition during an interview on Aug. The historic mission was the first use of nuclear weaponry in war. The blast killed between 70,000 and 100,000 people and injured countless others. 6, 1945, when Tibbets flew the B-29 bomber Enola Gay over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and released a 10,000-pound atomic bomb dubbed "Little Boy." His confidant Gerry Newhouse explained that Tibbets had concerns that his detractors would protest at his gravesite.
Tibbets' wishes were not to have a funeral or a headstone. Tibbets, who maintained that he didn't have any regrets about the World War II mission, had been in decline for months. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday at his home in Columbus, Ohio after suffering a number of health problems.
Read a timeline of the World War II bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Paul Tibbets, who flew the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died after suffering a number of health problems.