RIP Gen. Paul W Tibbets

[Bertie Wooster]

Just seen this on the BBC web site, announcing the death of the pilot of the <i>Enola Gay</i>, at the age of 92

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7073441.stm

 

[The Wingnut]

Blue skies, General Tibbets.

He and I crossed paths many times at the annual CAF airshows in Midland, TX. He was soft-spoken, kind and talkative. He spent many hours in the lobby of the CAF's museum sitting alone with a few books next to him, easily striking up a conversation with those who approached him.

 

[kpreed]

A great man. R.I.P. Not a popular deed to some, but I am very grateful for what he did, I still have my/ a father. (he was preparing for th main land invasion)

 

[Twitch]

Ah, the man that carried Truman's big stick and smote our enemy with it. A singular phenomenon unparalleled in history.

 

[FedoraGent]

He did what he needed to do.

He did what he needed to do...and he was ordered to do it. RIP sir.

FG.

 

[Natty Bumpo]

R. I. P. General. Our nation lost a great American today.

 

[carter]

He obeyed his Commander-in-Chief and did his duty in a time of War.

He now joins many of his comrades in arms who have gone before him.

May he Rest in Peace.

 

[Ben]

Ah, the man that carried Truman's big stick and smote our enemy with it. A singular phenomenon unparalleled in history.

Except for that whole Nagasaki thing a few days later.

As someone who was standing at ground zero of Tibbets' target just last week, let me just suggest that this is another opportunity to remind ourselves never to let atomic weapons be used again.

I am not saying anything for against Tibbets himself. Rather, as we consider why he merits attention, we should also remember the lessons learned.

 

[Josephine]

I heard on the radio he wanted to be buried without fanfare, in basically an unmarked grave so (paraphrasing here) it wouldn't become a hot spot for those with strong feelings about the dropping of the bombs.

edit: I see the article says about the same thing.

 

[MrBern]

ashes to ashes

I heard on the radio he wanted to be buried without fanfare, in basically an unmarked grave so (paraphrasing here) it wouldn't become a hot spot for those with strong feelings about the dropping of the bombs.

edit: I see the article says about the same thing.

the AP report on CNN indicates that he wanted is ashes scattered across the EnglishChannel.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/01/tibbetts.ap/index.html

 

[MrBern]

the NYT obit has a nice shot of him
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/01/obituaries/01cnd-tibbets.html

and a quote:
“There is no morality in war. A way must be found to eliminate war as a means of settling quarrels between nations.”

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Paul Tibbets -R.I.P.

I hadn't seen it posted elsewhere, but by now many must know that Col. Paul Tibbets died today at the age of 92. He never regretted, nor criticized his role or his mission to end the war in the Pacific. Truly an American hero and patriot. Godspeed Mr. Tibbets!

-dixon cannon

 

[Diamondback]

Dix et al, after the war he made Brigadier General, and was an early high-level player in the B-47 program. As I said on another forum:

Such a pity, that a good man who only did his duty--mind you, there's plenty of heroism in that--had to live out the rest of his life in fear from the media-academia complex.

I met General Tibbets once, a very quiet man who kept to himself, even reclusive to a degree.

We need to start a campaign to get this man a posthumous Medal of Honor on behalf of the entire Enola Gay/Bock's Car aircrews, if he wasn't awarded one in life.

In pace requiescat, General.

http://www.usmemorialday.org/audio/bugltaps.mp3

 

[scotrace]

Two threads merged.


God Bless him. A well earned rest.

 

[Ben]

CMH?

We need to start a campaign to get this man a posthumous Medal of Honor on behalf of the entire Enola Gay/Bock's Car aircrews, if he wasn't awarded one in life.

Why is this, do you think? I'm curious because people keep saying that he was just doing his duty.

Also, by that point in the war, wasn't the raid kind of milk run? Did the U.S. already have dominance in the air? As I recall, and I am not quite the scholar a lot of you guys are, but there wasn't even a fighter escort for the Hiroshima raid.

I mean, in being one of the ones who dropped the bomb, the crew of the Enola Gay probably saved a lot of lives on both sides of the war, but it not quite the act of heroism that has been awarded the CMH in the past.

 

[Fletch]

History's consensus seems to be that the Bomb forced the surrender of a Japan whose code was never to surrender, and to fight to the death.

Besides saving the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of American lives that would have been lost in a land invasion of Japan that would have dragged on well into 1946, surely hundreds of thousands more Japanese lives would have been lost too as we continued incendiary raids on city after city, literally bombing Japan back into the Stone Age.

As it was, we broke the back of a thousand-year-old warrior culture in a little over a week, and we showed the world that nuclear weapons, even those puny first-generation 20 kilotonners of ours, were too horrifically powerful ever to be used again (never mind how long it took for the world to begin to admit it).

Act well your part; there all the honor lies. -Alexander Pope

 

[Twitch]

Ben what I meant as unparralled is that it was the 1ST irregardless of Nagasaki.

We must remember that there was no guarantee of success simply because they lit of one of the 3 nukes they'd cobbled up. While they were "pretty sure" from the Trinity test that the entire Earth atmosphere would not immolate to destroy the planet, this was a different bomb in a completely different scenario.

Instead of blowing from ground level the Hiroshima bomb would detonate at 1,600 feet. There was nothing known about that scenario. There existed a real possibility that the concussive wave would tear Enola Gay apart as there was no data on such things.

The reason only a 2 ship element was chosen and fighter escort was not sent was because of subtrafuge. If you notice the big R on the tail of the B-29 that stood for Recon. The Japanese were used to seeing weather ships singularly or in pairs so they weren't alarmed. A fighter escort normallly meant a bombing raid in all other occassions which would have alerted the enemy to send interceptors aloft.

They did have a small number of planes capable of interception at altitude. A few could have made quick work of a pair of bombers.

All that said I suppose in retrospect a lot of people feel Tibbets should have always had the MOH because of some nostalgic restospect alone. He certain wasn't on just another mission but in truth he was not involved in combat heroics.

There are a lot of ifs in war and "if" the Russians had passed along Japan's half hearted probe for alleged peace would we have even believed it considering their dogged 4.5 years of "no surrender- fight to the last man- take as many of the enemy with you as possible" mentality that they had illustrated in EVERY combat?

I researched a multi-part article I wrote a while ago and got some freedom of information documents and of course studied several other written works. Some of what I found was:

There was EXTREME discussion over casualties upon invasion and what they would be. At the time it was considered they would be very high given a bad turn of events and less if the Japanese folded. (If they fought like demons for fortified islands how do you think they would fight for Kyushu?)

The good scenario was that we would have as many dead and wounded as we had in the entire war to date from 12/41!!

Instead of the 5 landing beaches at Normandy there would be 35 on Kyushu. and our intel was so poor considering the Japanese strength it is criminal. We as victors downplay our ex-enemy's potential to the point of jesting. Believe me, the Japanese were potent in a last stand scenario.

We thought they'd have about 350,000 cobatants in southern Kyushu by the Novermber invasion. They had that many there in August with 900,000 total incoming! We thought they had about 1,500 combat worthy aircraft when they had over 12,000. Most would become kamikazes of course. At Okinawa the US Navy suffered the greatest number of casualties in its history due to the onset of kamikaze operations.

They were cranking them out in caves, unseen.

The entire place was honeycombed with interconnected fortifications of land mines, caves, pill boxes, mortars, barbed wire, snipers, suiciders in spider holes and the probable use of gas and biological toxic agents developed in China’s infamous Units 516 and 731 plus underground aircraft hangers.

Besides the military there were organized civilian defenses 28 million strong armed with outdated weapons and bamboo spears.

And if combat alone would not have been bad enough, one little-known factor that is never discussed is the fact that the worst typhoon in US Naval history swept the proposed armada assembly area off Okinawa on October 9, 1945. 403 ships were either sunk, destroyed beyond repair or scrapped. That was the geatest loss of Navy ship in history. Countless aircraft were ripped to pieces in the 150 MPH winds along with hangars, other buildings and tents housing 150,000 troops. Harbor facilities were ruined, power was out and supplies blown away. Of course there were relatively few ships, personnel and equipment without the invasion on.

Had Typhoon Louise set upon the 22 divisions of more than half a million invasion-ready personnel along with some estimated 5,000 ships and 4,000 aircraft, the devastation would certainly been worse and would have no doubt delayed the November 1st date to invade Kyushu. It possibly would have been pushed back at least to the March 1946.

By then they would have had many, many more little rocket powered kamikaze air craft easily and quicky built and additional kamikaze speed boats.

Had an invasion gone off it is estimated some 10 million Japanese would have perished with a few hundred thousand Americans. And 10-year mop up plans were being envisioned due to the fact that it would take that long to completely subdue all Japanese combatants once they melted into the mountains and such.

And if you like to denigrate your enemies and lessen their potency you need to know that the Japanes were actively working on an atomic bomb too. This is one of the best kept secrets of WW 2. Nope they weren't too stupid and, like the Germans could have deployed a radiation or "dirty" bomb anytime after 1943.

They only surrendered after the Emperor had a sudden change of heart and personally intervened to break a tie of the War Council of 3 to 3 AFTER both nukes were dropped.

And guess what we were fresh outta nukes. It took the entire strength of our nation to produce 3 at that time and it would be months before more could be produced.

I learned 2 lessons from this:

Never underestimate your enemies and don't attempt to revise history from a catbird perch decades later with modern and jaundiced points of views.

 

[Diamondback]

I mean, in being one of the ones who dropped the bomb, the crew of the Enola Gay probably saved a lot of lives on both sides of the war, but it not quite the act of heroism that has been awarded the CMH in the past.

Ben, I would respectfully argue that saving the lives of an entire nation, or what was left of one in Japan, should certainly qualify--as Mac once said: "The winner of the next [World] War will be a 2nd Lieutenant who pulls the string on an A-bomb--and he should be made a full General immediately. The winner of a war deserves four stars."
As I said, doing one's duty is heroism enough--the only prior test had been Trinity, they didn't know if was going to knock them from the skies (if they were much lower, that would have been a risk) or what was gonna happen.

Besides, Tibbets exploited a hole in Japanese defenses--they wouldn't send fighters up after single or small, say less than 5 or 10, groups of bombers, and each A-bomb strike was only a loose three-ship formation. One well ahead of the strike aircraft for weather recon, the other well behind for BDA.

 

[panamag8or]

He was a graduate of the University of Florida, so Gator Nation has also lost a hero.

 

[Lincsong]

Rest in Peace