6 August 1945, Col Tibbets and crew took off in the Enola Gay. His grandson is an Air Force Academy graduate who came up flying B-2 Spirit bombers. (92) commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in the final days of World. Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay during the 509 Composite Groups mission to. His family was also a proud military family. He even re-enacted the bombing in a B-29 during a 1976 Texas air show and denounced the Smithsonian’s exhibition of the actual plane when it debuted because of the exhibition’s focus on the suffering of the Japanese people and not the brutality of the Japanese military. Yet, long before that, he was an authentic hero and pilot. He proudly named his airplane Enola Gay after his beloved mother. He is best known for being the pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane to drop the first atomic bomb in WW2. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, he was one of the youngest but most experienced pilots in the Army Air Forces.
It wasn’t that Tibbets wasn’t proud of his service. But instead of being interred at home or at Arlington National Cemetery with all his brothers in arms, he was cremated and his ashes spread across the English Channel. Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr., 1915-2007.Mint condition 8' x 10' black-and-white photograph of Tibbets with his Enola Gay flight crew standing in front of the plane, boldly signed Paul Tibbets. The Grandson of Col Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay (Hiroshima, Aug 6, 1945) is now the second in command of all US Nuclear bomber and missile forces. Scroll down to see images of the item below the description.
He was the man who dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat against an enemy city. 1313601 World War II Atomic Bomb Hiroshima Paul W. He was never forgotten, however, and never would be. When Paul Tibbets died in January 2007, he had been retired from the Air Force since 1966.