As a little boy, Paul Warfield Tibbets was very interested in flying. One day, his mother agreed to pay one dollar to get him into an aeroplane at the local carnival. In 1927, when Paul turned 12, Tibbets’ father hired a barnstormer, Doug Davis, to fly over the racetrack park as a promotional stunt. Paul flew with Davis, dropping candy bars with tiny parachutes to the crowd of people attending the races. Little Paul could never have imagined that one day, instead of scattering candy, he would scatter 64 kilograms of uranium hidden in the belly of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare.
After his undergraduate studies, Tibbets had planned on becoming an abdominal surgeon. But he studied medicine for only a year and a half before changing his mind about becoming a doctor. Instead, he decided to enlist in the United States (U.S.) Army and become a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps. On 9 October 1942, Tibbets led the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe, attacking industrial targets in the French city of Lille. Poor bombing accuracy resulted in numerous civilian casualties and less damage to the rail installations than hoped, but nevertheless the mission was hailed as an overall success because “it reached its target”. On that first mission, Tibbets saw in real time that his bombs were falling on innocent civilians.
At the time, he thought to himself, “People are getting killed down there that don't have any business getting killed. Those are not soldiers”. Struggling with his emotions and discomfort, he searched for meaning in the killings he performed. He thought back to a lesson he had learned during his time at the medical school from his roommate, who was a doctor. This doctor explained to him about his former classmates who failed the program. The reason why they had failed was that “they had too much sympathy for their patients”, which “destroyed their ability to render the medical necessities”. It suddenly dawned on Tibbets that indeed sympathy and morality are not good things for his business.
“I am just like that if I get to thinking about some innocent person getting hit on the ground. I am supposed to be a bomber pilot and destroy a target. I won't be worth anything if I do that … I made up my mind then that the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I was instructed to perform a military mission to drop the bomb. That was the thing that I was going to do the best of my ability. Morality, there is no such thing in warfare. I don't care whether you are dropping atomic bombs, or 100-pound bombs, or shooting a rifle. You have got to leave the moral issue out of it.”
Tibbets has entered history as the aircraft captain who flew the B-29 Superfortress known as the Enola Gay, which he named after his mother, whom he was very fond of. While flying the Enola Gay, he dropped the “Little Boy”, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In September 1944, he was appointed the commander of the group, which would conduct the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Flight into the darkness
On 6 August 1945 at 2.45 in the morning, the Enola Gay departed North Field for Hiroshima, Japan, with Colonel Tibbets at the controls. I can imagine him thinking of his wife and two sons back in the U.S. in the middle of the night as he woke up ready for the biggest mission in his life. It was past midnight as he gathered with his crew and prepared for flight. I cannot help but wonder whether Tibbets was nervous about the prospect of killing hundreds of thousands of people that day. Of course, his state of mind may not have allowed him to think in terms of “killing”, as in this case he would never be able “to carry out a military mission to the best of his ability”.
Tinian, the U.S. air base, was approximately 3,200 km away from Japan, so it took Tibetts and his crew six hours to reach Hiroshima. They received regular radio updates confirming clear skies over Hiroshima. They were ready for the biggest task, which they rehearsed for almost a year at Utah Air Force Base using large dummy payloads shaped like the real weapons. In the belly of their aircraft was sitting, ready to be dropped, the atomic bomb. As they approached the target city, the crew members put on protective dark goggles just before the release.
Monday Morning in Hiroshima
On the Monday morning of 6 August 1945, Hiroshima looked like a calm, bustling, and undamaged city. The day began as a quiet, hot summer morning with a bright, clear blue sky and good visibility. Residents were actively going to work, students were mobilised outdoors to help clear fire lanes, and families, like Tibbets’ one back in the U.S., were eating late breakfast or opening their shops. Because the city had largely escaped major conventional bombing raids up to that point, its streets, wooden neighbourhoods, bridges, and classic urban architecture remained fully intact. At 8.15 am, under a clear blue sky, a blinding flash of light instantly turned it into a devastating scene of massive fires, collapsed buildings, and total ruin.
Within seconds, a powerful shockwave and extreme heat wave flattened or gutted roughly five square miles of the city centre, reducing wooden houses and concrete structures alike to heavy rubble. The city quickly filled with thick dust and smoke, plunging the morning into a dark, suffocating twilight as massive, uncontrollable firestorms erupted across the ruins. A single atomic bomb detonated around 600m above the centre of the city, producing an intense flash of white light hotter than the surface of the sun.
Now you see it, now you don't
Tibbets recalled that the city was covered with a tall mushroom cloud after the bomb was dropped. Only Tibbets, Parsons, and Ferebee knew the nature of the weapon; the others on the bomber crew were told only to expect a blinding flash and given protective goggles. “It was hard to believe what we saw”, Tibbets told reporters, while his crew member Parsons said, “the whole thing was tremendous and awe-inspiring … the men aboard with me gasped ‘My God’.”
The 12-man crew were excited and terrified by the sights below them. The grey mushroom cloud was reaching the sky. In an instant, it took life and permanently disabled hundreds of thousands of civilians. Those who did not die on the spot would slowly die over the next few decades in terrible pain caused by radiation to the skin. Robert Lewis, a crew member, recalled in 1982 what he saw from the sky above Hiroshima. “I’ll never forget that feeling. You could see a good-sized city, then you didn’t see it anymore. It was simply gone.” Yunko, a 13-year-old girl who survived Hiroshima, testified to what she saw on the ground. “That’s when we saw everything had been flattened. There was nothing left. Across the street was a neighbour’s farm, where they grew vegetables. There had been a big cherry tree that was now smashed. The farm had completely disappeared.”
‘Celebrating’ Hiroshima
Tibbets was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross immediately after landing on Tinian following the Hiroshima mission. By that time, the bomb had unleashed immense thermal energy, reducing much of the city and its infrastructure, including hospitals and other medical facilities, to ashes. While the people of Hiroshima were left to die in agony, suffering severe flash burns, skin peeling, and the devastating effects of radiation, Tibbets was welcomed home as a hero. He quickly became a celebrity, with photographs and interviews featuring him, his wife, and his children appearing in major American newspapers. Family members, including his wife and descendants, expressed great pride in his military service and historical role. “I am so proud of Granddad. Millions of lives were saved, as were generations of people.” He was seen as a national hero who had ended the war with Japan, which finally capitulated driven by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tibbets received an invitation from the U.S. President Harry S. Truman to visit the White House, and his 509th Composite Group was awarded an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award 50 years after the bombing in 1999.
Tibbets had asked for no funeral or headstone, because he feared that opponents of the bombing might use it as a place of protest or destruction. In accordance with his wishes, his body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered over the English Channel; he had flown over the Channel many times during the war. In later life, Tibbets strongly defended the decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and became a symbolic figure in the debate over their use. At the time of his posting to India, a newspaper denounced him as the “world's greatest killer”. In a 1975 interview, he said, “I’m proud that I was able to plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did … I sleep clearly every night…I can assure you, I have never lost a night’s sleep on the deal.”
“I knew when I got the assignment”, he told a reporter in 2005, “it was going to be an emotional thing. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible.”
I would do the same again
Till the day he died, Tibbets repeatedly stated that he had no regrets about piloting the Enola Gay to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, famously affirming across numerous interviews that “he would do it again” under the same wartime circumstances. At the age of 30, Tibbets, then a colonel, never expressed any regret over his role. He maintained that it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do. Moreover, in 1985 he told an interviewer that, if asked to drop a nuclear weapon on Hanoi during the Vietnam War, “I would’ve without any question.” And he also said he would have done so against Muslim extremists. He stated in 2002 that he supported using nuclear weapons against current U.S. enemies: “Oh, I wouldn’t hesitate if I had the choice. I’d wipe ‘em out. You’re gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: ‘You’ve killed so many civilians.’ That’s their tough luck for being there.”
Tibbets died in his Columbus, Ohio, home in 2007, at the age of 92.
No regrets and no apology
Within the first few months after the bombing, it is estimated by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation that around 166,000 people died in Hiroshima, while another 80,000 died in the second bombing three days later on 9 August in Nagasaki. These deaths include those who died due to the force and excruciating heat of the explosions as well as deaths caused by acute radiation exposure. The United States has never officially apologised to Japan for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Japan did not formally “forgive” the U.S. in a specific diplomatic declaration, but instead shifted focus toward a powerful postwar alliance and global peace.
Rather than holding a lasting national grudge, both countries moved forward due to strategic needs and shared political goals. People still die from the long-term effects of the 1945 atomic bomb, with thousands of names added to the memorial cenotaph each year. It is a living memorial. The city of Hiroshima updates the official death toll at the peace park cenotaph every year, which includes survivors who passed away from radiation-linked illnesses in the preceding 12 months. The atomic bomb was an indiscriminate weapon that targeted a heavily populated city, causing mass civilian casualties and disproportionate suffering; still, it was never held as a war crime.
“Before I die, I want to see a world free of nuclear weapons,” said Keiko Ogura, a hibakusha, an atomic bomb survivor. She was eight years old on August 6, 1945, when the US dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Keiko’s dream, however, is still far from becoming a reality. At the present moment, the global total is estimated at around 12,500 nuclear warheads, and modern thermonuclear designs are exponentially more powerful than what was the 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb. Only nine heads of state – the leaders of the United States, Russia, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea have the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, placing all life on this planet at risk.