But when Tibbets died at age 92, he requested cremation with no headstone – and no funeral - military honors or not. His grandson is an Air Force Academy graduate who came up flying B-2 Spirit bombers. His family was also a proud military family. When Tibbets dropped the bomb, we dropped our instruments and made. 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. He proudly named his airplane Enola Gay after his beloved mother. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, he was one of the youngest but most experienced pilots in the Army Air Forces. Paul Tibbets entered history as the pilot of the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.He later became a Brigadier General in the U.S.
It wasn’t that Tibbets wasn’t proud of his service. Called the best pilot in the World War II-era Army Air Force, Col.
The move made Tibbets a household name after his crew completed the world’s first atomic bombing mission, which destroyed much of the Japanese city and killed tens of thousands of its citizens. Paul Tibbets was also the pilot of the Enola Gay, relegating the lower-ranked Lewis to co-pilot. 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. As commander of the Hiroshima mission, Col. Ferebee, then 26 and a veteran of 64 combat. from Tinian Island in the western Pacific. VanKirk was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets fledgling 509th Composite Bomb. The 12-man crew aboard the B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off for Hiroshima at 2 a.m. Army Air Corps bombardier and Mocksville native, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Thus, when it came time to select a commander for the 509th Composite Group, Tibbets was at the top of the list to head a nascent atomic bombing unit.
By the summer of 1944, he was the most experienced and knowledgeable B-29 pilot alive. He was the man who dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat against an enemy city. On August 6, 1945, Major Thomas Wilson Ferebee, a U.S. Tibbets became arguably the single most competent and experienced combat bomber pilot in the U.S. 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. Ferebees death leaves only four surviving members of the Enola Gays crew, including the pilot, retired Brigadier General Paul Tibbets.