I can’t see much heroic in it myself. Perhaps living with the consequences of his actions might be. I can’t imagine how he did that.
Can I be the first to say that a possible clue as to what you are talking about generally helps the whole debating thing?
Paul Tibbets. He might have been a hero if he had refused to carry out the order to bomb Hiroshima on the grounds that it was an unlawful order (involving, as it did, the deliberate targeting of civilians). As it was, he was just a guy carrying out orders.
To be fair to all the crew,not just Tibbets,keep in mind that none of those guys nor any one else had any conception of just what was being unleashed.Secrecy was kept to the extent that the crew of the USS Indianapolis was sacrificed for it.
As Giles said,had he refused orders someone else would have made the run.
The boy was a stud with balls of solid brass.
He led the first US bomber mission over Europe.
He was selected to fly Ike to Gibraltar as he was the best pilot in theater.
He was selected to train the A-bomb unit.
He flew the mission his own self.
Plus he handled the rest of his life with a great deal of dignity.
Of course there was Hitler’s targeting of London, and the Allies’ firebombing of Dresden and the Americans’ firebombing of cities in Japan. In a 200 interview Tibbets said that there is no morality in war. ‘War itself is immoral.’ I don’t think it’s fair to single him out just because he had a different kind of bomb. While I am opposed to nuclear weapons, I think their use in WWII did ultimately save lives.
I think they had a pretty fair idea if not explicit knowledge of what they were carrying.
Tibbets was not a hero, nor was he a villain. He was just a guy doing his job.
I have heard that by dropping the bomb and ending the war early we ended up saving more lives than were killed by the bomb. Is that true or false?
Yeah, but Audie Murphy could take him.
When Chuck Norris has nightmares, they are of Paul Tibbets.
He was a hero by carrying out a bombing mission that without question saved tens of thousands of American and Japanese lives.
According to Wiki the firebombing of Tokyo claimed at least 80,000 lives, and the total may have exceeded 100,000. The initial casualties from the Hiroshima bombing may have been 70,000 (though that number climbed due to after-effects and may have reached 90,000 or over 100,000 by the end of the year). Had the war continued there doubtless would have been more firebombings, so Japanese casualties would have been several/many times those caused by ‘Fat Man’ and ‘Little Boy’. Who knows how many American soldiers would have died in an invasion?
It is without question true. The dropping of the bomb saved lives. Anyone who thinks differently just isn’t paying attention to history.
His crew may not have had an idea, but I’m pretty sure Tibbets had a pretty good handle on what he was dropping. He was in charge of the bomber group that was developed with help from the Manhatten Project people to figure out the details of delivering the bomb to a target.
I don’t think so, and it’s been debated at great length in this forum. So obviously it’s not “without question, true”.
But regardless, Paul Tibbet believed in the overall mission of the Allies, and did his duty as he knew it. A lot of bomber crews didn’t make it back home, and I tend to think of all those guys as heroes. And a lot of them, like George McGovern, hated the idea of killing civilians, but knew it was inevitable in that kind of war (like most wars).
Look some guys learned to fly. They flew in the Battle of Britain defended the White Cliffs of Dover and all that. Some guys got stuck with the dirty jobs. That does not make them bad people. While civilians were certainly killed, they were not targeted. Using the technology of the time, smashing entire cities was the most selective thing we could do.
A lot of things are debated on this site, for no apparent reason - not sure that should be the yardstick.
I’ll stand by my statement. I challenge anyone to read the history of Iwo Jima or Okinawa and state that the bombings didn’t save lives. The battle for Japan would have been a long and bloody mess. The Japanese would have fought house to house with every man woman and child. And with the Russians joining the party as they would have, it would have been even uglier.
Or to say it another way, how would history have judged the main players if they had refused on moral grounds to use the bomb?
The biggest crime of the era would have been loosing to the Bad Guys due to our moral scruples.
The crew of the Enola Gay must have known that they were dropping something huge and unique.
The aircraft had to take special actions immediately after dropping the weapon to mitigate the expected blast effects. (Plus the welders goggles, IIRC.)
I assume that Col. Tibbets had/has no regrets because of his viewpoint on the necessity of the war, the necessity of killing (civilains, as well as military), and what he thought the stakes were.
He was not alone in those opinions. A majority of those in the military, the civilians in the political and military chain of command (the order was signed by the PotUS), and probably the “man on the street” were all in favor of a “total war” philosophy.
Those folks were a product of their times. While I myself am a product of a somewhat different enviornment, I can understand how they got to the conclusions they did.
In NPR’s obit on Tibbets, Hiroshima was described as a city with a military base. If that’s true, maybe it mitigates the killing of civilians. I thought of comparing it to the submarine attacks on civilian ships, but that’s not a valid argument. Tibbets and his crew were bound, as all soldiers are, to make individuals decisions about the legality of their actions, no matter how barbaric the enemy’s actions may have been.
The bombing was not a snap decision made in the heat of battle. The pilot and crew had plenty of time to think it over. The order came directly from the Commander In Chief, Harry S. Truman.
As for myself, I have grappled with the Hiroshima question many times. Was it the right thing to do? I have never reached a firm conclusion.
When it happened, I was just a twinkle in my father’s pants; I was born in 1949. Still, it haunts me, though I had nothing to do with it. It haunted Tibbets, too, for years after the war.
Okay, you’ve said this twice and suggested other people do some research if they disagree. Care to back up your own conclusion a little bit?