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"After 39 years," he says, "it's easy to go back and Monday-morning quarterback. This is where he feels most comfortable, where he can talk about the context of the Hiroshima blast. They ask if there might have been some viable alternative to the incineration of more than 100,000 Japanese and disablement of thousands more.
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History classes at Ohio State University, for example, have demanded to know the need for his mission. They're less likely to be inhibited by tact and more prone to be driven by an inno. He appears to enjoy most his talks with college students. From time to time, pilots' organizations pump him for details of the Hiroshima flight, asking about everything from the organization of the 509th to the Enola Gay's performance. Often, a friendly group like the Rotarians or Kiwanians will call upon him to hear a few words from the man who dropped the bomb. When Tibbets does engage in public discussion about nuclear war, his conversation is usually retrospective. Who was it - Lenin? - who said socialism and capitalism can't co-exist? Boy, I believe it."
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You tell me where they do anything they've ever said they're going to do, in arms limitation. You take a look at Russia, and you tell me where anybody protests in Russia. They don't face reality, as far as I'm concerned. They don't know what they're talking about. He's paid a lot of attention to the nuclear-freeze movement, and he doesn't like it. 6, 1945 likely none of them knew that the man whose name is forever linked with Hiroshima was quietly working in a nearby building.īut Tibbets saw them. One of them carried a placard that read: "One B-1 equals a thousand Hiroshimas!" Most of the marchers looked young enough to have no memory of Aug. They were protesting Rockwell's part in assembling the B-1 bomber. One day a group of demonstrators circled the walkway in front of a Rockwell International plant not more than a mile from his office. Sometimes the reminders can be quite nearby. But sometimes - as now, on its anniversary - he is again reminded of his explosive moment in history. Tibbets today works in a large, immaculate office near a runway at Port Columbus Airport. 6, 1945, it was just 17 seconds behind schedule. And although he was simply following orders with devastating precision, Tibbets accepts that people will forever think of him as the pilot of that B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, that carried the world's first atomic bomb used in war.Īnd after his 11 months of training and planning, maintaining a ruthless security network, watching as the B-29 was modified to accept the new weapon and as a team of nuclear scientists assembled the volatile components, when the bomb finally exploded over Hiroshima on Aug. That was 40 years ago, in the last throes of World War II. But in his past is a single act that marked him for controversy for the rest of his life. For many years his parents lived quietly in Orlando, where he often came to visit. He grew up in Miami, where his first experience flying was as a 12-year-old, in a biplane with a barnstorming pilot, dropping Baby Ruth candy bars on tiny parachutes to a crowd at the Hialeah Race Track. He is the president of Executive Jet Aviation, an airborne taxi service for corporate big shots in Columbus, Ohio. He is a polite, almost courtly gentleman. One thing I won't do: Years ago I ran into people who wanted me to defend what I had done, and I won't do it." I understand, and I respect everybody's opinion. "In the course of the years that have gone by, I've gotten some hate letters.