Still, Tibbets went back and forth in regards to the subject for the remainder of his life (he died in 2007).
Mine were, basically, 'this is a tremendous thing. Everybody was thinking, there's no question in my mind about that.
When it struck, the bomb immediately took the lives of 80,000 Japanese citizens - when the radiation-related deaths were factored in, the number grew to an estimated 150,000 or more.Īfterwards, I guess you'd call it a quiet and melancholy group going back. Tibbets was the pilot in charge of dropping the first-ever atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. had seen combat he'd seen a war-devastated Germany and his brothers in arms die in front of him-but what he hadn't foreseen was the effect that an atomic bomb could have on an entire country of people. But when I looked at it-when I saw what had taken place, and I saw the city covered, and what appeared to be going on-I knew that I just hadn't even come close to imagining what the effect was.Ĭolonel Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr.
