It killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless more. The plane and its crew of 14 dropped five-ton “Little Boy” on the morning of Aug. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.
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. He wanted no funeral and no headstone, to avoid giving detractors a place to protest, said longtime friend Gerry Newhouse. 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.
