![who piloted the enola gay who piloted the enola gay](https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/8520/9873239_1.jpg)
Robert Oppenheimer, the man who headed the U.S. Tibbets immediately put the B-29 into a steep diving right turn to escape the effects of the eminent blast. At 9:15 a.m., the Enola Gay shuddered as it released the 9,000-pound payload. Tibbets reminded his crew to put on the heavy Polaroid glasses they had been given to protect their eyes from the blast. Tibbets climbed the aircraft to 30,700 feet and bombardier Tom Ferebee entered last-minute wind corrections into the Norton bomb site. We just went up there and did our job.Īfter a seven-hour flight, Van Kirk had navigated the Enola Gay over the target just 15 seconds off their intended ETA. Everybody paid attention… Dick Nelson read a book, something about a prize fighter or something of this type. You’ve got to understand, the navigator is the only guy working all the time. There weren’t a lot of usual conversations. Sixty years after that historic moment, Tibbets and Van Kirk reunited to discuss the flight and to look at how they would like history to remember them. Later in the war, the two would fly together in the Enola Gay to drop the world’s first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. With navigator Dutch Van Kirk, he flew a number of missions in the European Theatre and later flew in support of the Allied advance into Africa. Paul Tibbets piloted a B-17 (left) named the Red Gremlin. Van Kirk, the navigator, remembers that night.Įarly in World War II, Gen. Eisenhower was just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.Īt 2:15 a.m., on August 6, 1945, Paul Tibbets and Dutch Van Kirk took off from Tinian Island in the Pacific and were headed for Hiroshima, Japan. Willy had to use the relief tube, but it wasn’t working properly.
![who piloted the enola gay who piloted the enola gay](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwgA/RynwnEs6rGI/AAAAAAAABDk/MBOeizUaa2E/w1200-h630-p-nu/Paul+Tibbets+%26+Enola+Gay.jpg)
Eisenhower and his staff was on our airplane. We were flying down from Europe to North Africa in the B-17. His major claim to shame was that he peed on a general who later became the U.S. We were waving goodbye to all those Arab farmers that we had robbed and they were all shaking their fists at us…. Then we had to leave to go to a new base, and as we took off, we still had all their chickens. So every night, we had a bunch of chickens in the bomb bay.
![who piloted the enola gay who piloted the enola gay](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/colonel-paul-tibbets-pilot-of-b-29-everett.jpg)
So one of our guys named Sanders told the Arabs that if they’d give us all the chickens for free, he’d give them the B-17 for a chicken coop. Paul went to work, and pretty soon, we were eating chicken every day instead of K-rations, which was a wonderful thing, especially with that gasoline garnish he put in there! This went on for a while, and we were running out of money because these Arabs were robbing us blind. Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk: When we were in Africa, Paul Tibbets got the idea we could cook chickens in the empty five-gallon gasoline cans.
![who piloted the enola gay who piloted the enola gay](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/G14AAOSw96Zb9ss-/s-l300.jpg)
Paul Tibbets and Dutch Van Kirk, navigator for both the Red Gremlin and the Enola Gay, took a moment to look back at their unique flying careers. She was joined by Glacier Girl, a P-38 recovered from more than 260 feet of Arctic ice in Greenland and a restored C-47 in formation flights around Atlanta. During the day, members of the Tibbets crew rode in the Liberty Belle, one of only 14 of the 12,000 B-17s manufactured that’s currently flying. Aviation entrepreneur Pat Epps invited Tibbets to Atlanta for a surprise reunion with surviving crewmembers of his B-17, the Red Gremlin, and his B-29, the Enola Gay. This past winter, Paul Tibbets turned 90 years old. On August 10, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally, and World War II was over. In August of 1945, Tibbets would fly the B-29 Super-fortress named after his mother, Enola Gay, to drop the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. In 1943, just six years after he learned to fly, Tibbets returned to the United States to become one of the few people in the world to be briefed on one of America’s most highly guarded secrets-the Manhattan Project, led by nuclear scientist Robert Oppen-heimer. He flew the B-17 Flying Fortress with the 340th Bomb Squadron Bombardment Group in Europe and later flew missions to support the Allied invasion of North Africa. In 1942, Tibbets joined the 97th Bomb Group in the Bolero Mission, ferrying B-17s, P-38s and C-47s from Bangor, Maine, across Greenland and Iceland to the European Theatre. Paul Tibbets joined the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Ky., in 1937.