Paul Tibbets RIP

cyrusdvirus

Irish Times wrote:

US: The pilot of the aircraft which dropped the world's first atomic bomb used in warfare, Paul Tibbets, died yesterday aged 92.

Mr Tibbets flew the B-29 bomber Enola Gay which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

He insisted almost to his dying day that he had no regrets about the mission and had no problem sleeping.

Mr Tibbets, who died at his home in Columbus, Ohio, had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing that it would provide his detractors with a place to protest.

His historic mission in the aircraft named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of US involvement in the second World War and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare.

"I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Mr Tibbets told the Columbus Dispatch in a story published on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. "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."

He said in a 1975 interview: "I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did.

"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. I sleep clearly every night."

So what think you the forum? Was it right to drop the bomb
Personally I'm of the opinion that if the US had had to go ahead with Operations Coronet And Operation Olympic, as part of the overall Operation Downfall plan, it would have cost way more lives and could even have resulted the entire Japanese way of life and Japanese race.

eroo

yes,i think its widely accepted that it was the better option of a terrible situation.if they hadn't dropped the bomb,millions of people would have been killed and there was no guarantee the US would be succesful.they were going to be invading an empire where the majority of populus had previous military training.personally,i think the US would have lost with millions killed.after all the campaign would've lasted years so the US could only go on for so long,whereas the Japanese would fight until the very end as proven many times before..so the sacrifice of those innocents,unfortunately,was necessary to save the lives of many,many more..

BostonB

Hindsight is 50:50 vision.

cyrusdvirus

50:50? Don't you mean 20:20??

or have i missed the point

BostonB

LOL yes 20:20. I was tired when I posted that.

Militarily it was the right thing to do. U.S top brass expected 1 million plus casualties in the invasion of the Japanese mainland. You look after your boys first and foremost and thats what they did.

The "war ending weapon" probably shortened the war by about 12-24 months.

bunny shooter

they started it