Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. (born February 23, 1915) was the son of Enola Gay and Paul Warfield Tibbets in Quincy, Illinois.
On February 25, 1937, Paul enlisted as a flying cadet in the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. On August 5, 1945 Colonel Paul Tibbets formally named the B-29 Aircraft 44-86292 Enola Gay after his mother (she was named after the heroine, Enola Gay, of a novel her father had liked). On August 6, 1945 the Enola Gay departed with Tibbets at the controls at 2:45 a.m. for Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. local time.
In 1959 he was promoted to Brigadier General.
Paul Tibbets retired from the U.S. Air Force on August 31, 1966.
Awards and Decorations
Quotes
"We’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: 'You’ve killed so many civilians.' That’s their tough luck for being there." - Paul Tibbets to Studs Terkel, 2002 [1]
