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A Meditation on the Life of Hiroshima Pilot Paul Tibbets, Jr

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A Meditation on the Life of Hiroshima Pilot Paul Tibbets, Jr The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 1 | Number 0 | Jan 2008 Defending the Indefensible: A Meditation on the Life of Hiroshima Pilot Paul Tibbets, Jr. by Peter J. Kuznick Defending the Indefensible: A Meditation on the publicly and thoughtfully on the A-bomb Life of Hiroshima Pilot Paul Tibbets, Jr. decision, the lives it cost and also the lives it saved.”[1] A closer look at Tibbets’s life and Peter J. Kuznick comparison of his views with those of others who participated in the atomic bombings will shed On November 1, Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr., the light not only on whether Tibbets was as humane man who piloted the plane that dropped the and thoughtfully reflective as Kamm suggests, atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died at hisbut on why so many World War II veterans share Columbus, Ohio home at age 92. Throughout his Tibbets’s difficulty in moving beyond official adult life, he was a warrior. He bravely fought pieties of 1945 and today to understand the the Nazis in 1942 and 1943. He fought the complex history of the end of the Pacific War, the Japanese in 1944 and 1945. And he spent the next role the atomic bombings played in the Japanese 62 years fighting to defend the atomic bombings. surrender, and their own role in the historical process.[2] Paul Tibbets was born in Quincy, Illinois on February 23, 1915 and raised mostly in Miami, Florida. His father, a wholesale confectioner, sent him to Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois. As a young man, Tibbets had aspired to become a doctor. In his 1978 autobiography The Tibbets Story, in what some might consider ominous foreshadowing, Tibbets explained how his interest in medicine evolved. “The prospect of becoming a doctor was appealing to me,” he wrote. “On my grandfather’s farm in Iowa Tibbets and the Enola Gay during the summers of my boyhood, I had been fascinated by such things as the birth of animals In the days since his passing, Tibbets has been and the castration of pigs. The sight of blood both lionized and vilified. Among the most gave me no squeamish moments.”[3] But at age laudatory assessments is a piece (really a pair of 12, Tibbets participated in a unique promotional blogs) by Oliver Kamm that quickly shot up to #1 giveaway while working for a candy company. at History News Network.He sat in the front seat of a tiny Waco 9 biplane (http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/44318.html) and, as the barnstormer sitting behind him flew Basing his judgment of Tibbets on the “accounts low to the ground over Hialeah race track and of those who knew him,” Kamm declared that other places where people gathered, he dropped Tibbets was “a humane man, who reflected Baby Ruth candy bars with parachutes attached 1 APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0 to people below.[4] He later remembered the was given responsibility for testing and thrill and the sense of power this afforded, perfecting the new B-29 “Superfortresses,” the commenting, “No Arabian prince ever rode a largest, best-equipped, and most modern magic carpet with a greater delight or sense of bombers in the world. In August 1944, Tibbets superiority to the rest of the human race.” was called to Colorado Springs, where he met Thereafter, medicine could not compare with the with Col. John Lansdale, chief of security for the excitement of flying. Tibbets transferred from the Manhattan Project, and then with Gen. Uzal Ent, University of Florida to the University ofwho commanded the 2nd Air Force, Navy Cptn. Cincinnati, but dropped out to join the Army Air William “Deak” Parsons, associate director of the Corps in 1937. His experience administering Los Alamos laboratory, and physicist Norman arsenic treatments to syphilitics in two Cincinnati Ramsey. Lansdale grilled him about having been venereal disease clinics only convinced him that arrested by the North Miami police, who caught he was making the right choice.[5] him in the back seat of a car with a young lady. Convinced that such a blemish on his record did Though a mediocre student, Tibbets was a gifted not disqualify him for what lay ahead, Ent, pilot, and quickly worked his way up the ranks. Parsons, and Ramsey proceeded to fill him in on On August 17, 1942, as captain and commander the Manhattan Project’s efforts to make an atomic of the 340th Bomb Squadron in the 97thbomb and the special role that he was to play.[8] Bombardment Group, he led a dozen B-17 Gen. Ent’s initial words deeply impressed him. “Flying Fortresses” in the first daytime raid by “This thing is going to be very big,” he informed American bombers against German targets in the young pilot. “I believe it has the potential and occupied France, bombing railroad yards in possibility of ending the war.”[9] At that first Rouen. Subsequent strikes targeted marshalling meeting, Ramsey said, “The only thing we can yards, a shipyard, an aircraft factory, and a base tell you about the bomb is it’s going to explode for FW-190s. Tibbets demonstrated bothwith the force of twenty thousand tons of exceptional creativity and bravery inTNT.”[10] implementing U.S. tactical bombing strategies of the early war years. Daylight precision bombing Ent put Tibbets in charge of planning for delivery was particularly important because it allowed the of the atomic bombs when they were ready, U.S. to pinpoint military targets in a way that including assembling and training the teams that minimized the deaths of civilians who were would carry out that task. Tibbets, who Army Air killed indiscriminately in the far-less-accurate Force Commander Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold nighttime bombing raids conducted by the described as “the best damned pilot” in the Army British. Before that first attack, Tibbets told a Air Force,[11] handpicked the top pilots, reporter that he felt great apprehension over the bombardiers, radar operators, navigators, flight possibility of civilian casualties, admitting he was engineers, and crewmen and put them through “sick with thoughts of the civilians who might rigorous training. “My job, in brief,” he wrote in suffer from the bombs dropped by this machine.” his 1989 book Flight of the Enola Gay, “was to Watching the bombs fall, he thought, “My God, wage atomic war.”[12] In all, the 509th women and children are getting killed!”[6] In all, Composite Group that he headed consisted of 15 Tibbets flew 43 combat missions with the 8th Air B-29 Superfortress crews and 1800 men. Tibbets Force in England and the 12th in North Africa. was awed by the authority he was given at such a young age. He reflected, “Nobody in the future Following a run-in with Col. Lauris Norstad,[7] will ever be given the responsibility and operations officer of the 12th Air Force, the army authority that was given to a 29-year old transferred Tibbets back to the U.S., where he man.”[13] 2 APJ | JF 6 | 1 | 0 Those he selected endured extremely tight of their endeavor. Forty years later, Beser, who security while preparing for their mission at the was 24 at the time, recalled that the first thing desolate air base in Wendover, Utah. A security Tibbets told the assembled men at Wendover was force of 30 special agents bugged telephones, that, if what they were training for worked, it opened mail, and eavesdropped onwould significantly shorten the war.[18] conversations. The agents quickly shipped out Navigator Van Kirk, who had often flown with those they considered insufficiently discreet. Tibbets in Europe, thought to himself at the time, Tibbets imposed the same discipline on himself, “I’ve heard that before, too.” He would later never divulging the nature of the project to his change his mind and believe Tibbets had been wife or closest associates. He admitted, “I learned “pretty correct.”[19] to be the world’s best liar. People were always asking what I was doing. I was always thinking Beser, who had been studying engineering at ahead of what would sound logical. Then if I met Johns Hopkins when the war began, and Van someone six months later I’d have to try and Kirk both later claimed to have figured out what remember what I told him before.”[14] kind of bomb they were training to deliver. Shortly after arriving at Wendover, Beser was Tibbets once described Wendover as “the end of sent to Los Alamos for a security briefing by the world, perfect.”[15] His men weren’t so sure. Norman Ramsey who spoke of fundamental Lt. Jacob “Jake” Beser expressed the prevailing forces and chain reactions. Beser put that view when he wrote, “if the North American together with the presence of famous physicists Continent ever needed an enema, the tube would whose names he recognized and immediately be inserted here at Wendover.”[16] Theodore understood the kind of bomb that was being “Dutch” Van Kirk agreed with Beser, describing readied.[20] Van Kirk similarly reasoned, “if you the cold termite-infested barracks and rancid had any scientific training at all, you knew drinking water as “a shanty town withsomething about nuclear fission. And if you plumbing.[17] On June 27, 1945, Tibbets relocated knew about that, you knew that a nuclear his men to Tinian Island in the Marianas for final weapon was theoretically possible. Plus, we were preparations. surrounded by some of the top nuclear physicists of the day throughout our training. It didn’t take much to put two and two together.”[21] Others at Wendover, though aware that something major was afoot, would remain in the dark until the day of the Hiroshima bombing.[22] Thirty year old Sgt.
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