In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" said:
If it were up to me, a life sentence without hope of parole would be too
good for this jerk. To damage an irreplaceable aircraft, and a piece of
history, is absolutely unconscionable.
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From this mornings COLUMBUS DISPATCH...
A PLACE IN ANNALS OF WAR
Restored Enola Gay returns pilot to public eye
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Mike Harden
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
CHUCK KENNEDY | KNIGHT RIDDER / TRIBUNE
The retired brigadier general in front of the restored Enola Gay B-29
at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the National Air and Space Museum
in Chantilly, Va., outside Washington
FRED SQUILLANTE | DISPATCH
Paul W. Tibbets Jr., 88, during an interview at Lane Aviation in
Columbus
The last hurrah of the man who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima,
Japan, arrived a week with none of the acrimony that has sometimes
accompanied his notoriety.
Iıve had all the attention I need in this life," retired Brig. Gen.
Paul W. Tibbets Jr. said Sunday as he dawdled over pancakes at the Bob
Evans on E. Main Street. Iıd just as soon the phone never ring
again."
Ever since Aug. 6, 1945, he has shunned the spotlight.
The only order of business compelling enough to entice Tibbets to leave
his Columbus home to court media coverage was the restoration of the
Enola Gay, his old B-29 bomber. She was shining like a silver
dollar," said Tibbets, 88. The enhancement was 40 years in the works.
I wanted to climb in it and fly."
A week ago today, Tibbets saw the new wing of the Smithsonianıs
National Air and Space Museum at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in
Chantilly, Va.
His visit preceded the public opening Monday, when a Columbus resident
was arrested for hurling a red liquid at the plane to protest its
display.
The freshly burnished B-29 that Tibbets beheld during his sneak preview
is a far cry from the Enola Gay he ruefully witnessed going to ruin at
Andrews Air Force Base more than four decades ago.
I had flown her to Chicago in 1948 when she was given to the
Smithsonian," Tibbets recalled. "From there, she went to a place in
Texas called Rattlesnake Gulch."
By the time the bomber was flown to Andrews and stored in a remote
niche of the base near the nationıs capital, "The windows had been
knocked out," Tibbets said.
"There were bird nests in it. Some of the instruments had been stripped
out by souvenir hunters."
The Enola Gay was dismantled in 1960. The Smithsonian stored various
parts in four Maryland warehouses.
"The people at the Smithsonian were trying to hide the . . . thing,"
Tibbets said.
When the museum brought a portion of the fuselage out of mothballs in
1993, bitter controversy erupted over exhibit text and display items.
Several veterans groups protested what they believed was a handwringing
apology for the Enola Gayıs mission.
"It was a disservice to the country," Tibbets said. "It suggested that
the Japanese were fighting to defend their heritage and their culture
and that we were fighting a war of vengeance and aggression. It was all
a bunch of crap, insulting to anyone who had worn a uniform."
The wording was changed, and the exhibit of the partial fuselage was
popular.
"The Enola Gay had almost 4 million visitors," Tibbets said. "The Star
Wars exhibit only got a million. That tells me there was a consensus on
the part of the public. They liked that airplane and appreciated what
it did."
This time around, the Smithsonian has assiduously avoided any exhibit
copy that could stir smoldering feelings. The Enola Gay display doesnıt
mention the number of atomic-bomb casualties.
But a mention of the toll wouldnıt have troubled Tibbets.
"Why be bashful or backward?" he asked. "Thatıs what it took to end the
war.
"What we had to do was convince the Japanese of the futility of
continuing the fight. Clausewitz said you must use everything at your
disposal to impose your will upon the enemy.
"The Japanese people understand that concept far better than the
American public ever will," Tibbets said he was once told by Mitsuo
Fuchida, lead pilot of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.
Fuchida, Tibbets said, told him he would have been honored to have been
handed the assignment to drop an A-bomb on a U.S. city during the war.
"You sure surprised us," Tibbets allowed when he first met Fuchida in
1952.
"You didnıt do such a bad job yourself," the former Japanese pilot
replied.
Tibbets visited Nagasaki a month after a pilot under his command
dropped the second atomic bomb there.
Although the second drop was somewhat off-target, Tibbets grasped the
staggering power of the new weapon and its potential to change warfare
forever.
He remained in the Air Force for more than 20 years after World War II.
Tibbets endured a spate of urban legends, fed by inaccuracies in news
accounts and books, that suggested he had either committed suicide,
been institutionalized or imprisoned.
"They said I was crazy," he groused, "said I was a drunkard, in and out
of institutions. At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center
at the Pentagon."
The culprit, apparently, was the late Claude Eatherly, who flew the
weather plane over Hiroshima on the day of the mission. After the war,
he experienced emotional problems that led him to try to hold up a
Texas post office with a water pistol.
Nevertheless, Eatherly convinced German philosopher and writer Gunther
Anders that he, not Tibbets, led the mission. Andersı book Burning
Conscience, published in 1962, became an endless source of chagrin for
Tibbets.
For years after military service, Tibbets quietly operated Executive
Jet Aviation at Port Columbus. He reared three sons none of whom
chose careers in the military. He lives in relative anonymity with his
second wife, Andrea, in suburban Columbus. He has indulged the press,
though never curried its attention.
He tired of the Eatherly debacle and wearied of successive waves of
journalists who thought they were the first to ask whether he regretted
dropping the bomb.
"Hell, no," he has said. "Iıve always believed I was on a mission not
to kill but to save lives. And I sure didnıt do it singlehandedly. It
took a lot of people to put me over that target."
But that was a long time ago.
"The guys who appreciated that I saved their asses are mostly dead
now," Tibbets said.
"I didnıt go out there just to save them. I went out to stop the
killing all over. When I was handed the assignment, I was told to form
a unit that could drop these two new bombs simultaneously on Germany
and Japan.
"Germany gave up before it could be dropped."
Tibbets has been asked dozens of times why he was chosen.
"Why would a young lieutenant colonel be picked to do the job?" he
mused. "I donıt know. I didnıt ask."
He was 30 when he flew the Hiroshima mission.
"That is one of the most astonishing things about his career," said
Tibbetsı namesake grandson, Air Force Maj. Paul Tibbets IV, a B-2
mission command pilot.
"He had such a tremendous amount of responsibility at such a young age.
I canıt fathom having that kind of responsibility at such a young age.
"He was born with the gift to lead. I donıt think I have that gift."
Naturally, his grandfather disagrees.
Young Paul will do what he has to do.
Mike Harden is a Dispatch columnist.