From MSNBC article:
I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing, Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on Aug. 6, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the bomb. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. 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.
Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his 
role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.
Im not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but Im proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did, he said in a 1975 interview.
Youve got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. … You use anything at your disposal.
He added: I sleep clearly every night.
From Air Force News Service:
BRIGADIER GENERAL PAUL W. TIBBETS JR.
Retired Sep. 1, 1966. Died Nov. 1, 2007.
General Tibbets was born in Quincy, Ill., in 1915. He graduated from Western Military Academy in Alton, Ill., in 1933, and later attended the University of Florida and the University of Cincinnati where he majored in chemistry.
He entered the Army Air Corps on Feb. 25, 1937 at Fort Thomas, Ky. Immediately thereafter, he entered flying school at Randolph Field, and in February 1938 graduated from pilot school at Kelly Field, Texas. His first assignment was to Flight B, 16th Observation Squadron, Lawson Field, Fort Benning, Ga.
In April 1941, General Tibbets became group engineering officer of the 3d Attack Group, Hunter Air Force Base, Savannah, Ga. On Dec. 4, 1941, he received orders to join the 29th Bomb Group at MacDill Field; however, before reporting to MacDill he was placed on temporary duty to take 21 B-18s to Pope Field, Fort Bragg, N.C. to form an anti-submarine patrol. In February 1942, General Tibbets actually reported for duty with the 29th Bomb Group at MacDill as engineering officer. After three weeks, he was made commander of the 340th Bomb Squadron, 97th Bomb Group, which was formed from a cadre taken from the 29th Bomb Group. From February until June 1942, he was in training for an overseas movement.
In June 1942, he arrived in England and immediately went into combat operations, flying 25 combat missions in B-17s, including the first American Flying Fortress raid against occupied Europe. In October 1942, the general was given the special assignment of flying General Mark Clark to make his rendezvous with the French in preparation for the invasion of North Africa. Upon his return from this trip, he was retained to ferry General Eisenhower and his staff to Gibraltar on the night of the invasion. General Tibbets then flew General Clark to Algiers where General Clark took control of the invasion forces.
For the next 30 days, General Tibbets conducted bombardment missions in the North African area under the direct control of the British, pending build-up of the American bomber forces.
He led the first heavy bombardment mission in support of the invasion of North Africa. In November 1942, General Tibbets reverted to control of the Twelfth Air Force and, with the arrival of the remainder of the 97th Bomb Group, resumed normal combat operations in the Sahara Desert area. In January 1943, he was reassigned to the Twelfth Air Force Headquarters at Algiers as assistant operations officer in charge of bomber operations under Colonel (now General) Lauris Norstad.
In March 1943, he was returned to the United States for the purpose of participating in the B-29 program. This flight test work with the Boeing factory and Air Materiel Command continued until March 1944 at which time General Tibbets was transferred to Grand Island, Neb., as director of operations under General Frank Armstrong who started a B-29 instructor transition school. In September 1944, he was assigned to the Atomic Bomb Project as the Air Force officer in charge of developing an organization capable of employing the atomic bomb in combat operations, and mating the development of the bomb to the airplane. In this function, he was also charged with the flight test development of the atomic bomb itself. As these developments progressed, General Tibbets was further charged with the tactical training of bombardment organizations and their deployment into the combat theater of operations. He flew the first atomic bomb mission against enemy forces, dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.
With the end of the war in 1945, General Tibbets’ organization was transferred to what is now Walker Air Force Base, Roswell, N.M., and remained there until August 1946. It was during this period that the Bikini Bomb Project took place, with General Tibbets participating as technical adviser to the Air Force commander. He was then assigned to the Air Command and Staff School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., from which he graduated in 1947. His next assignment was to the Directorate of Requirements, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, where he subsequently served as director of the Strategic Air Division.
In June 1950, General Tibbets was assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and from July 1950 until February 1952, was B-47 project officer at the Boeing Airplane Company, Wichita, Kan., where the service test of the B-47 to determine its operational suitability took place. From February 1952 until August 1954, he was commander of the Proof Test Division at Eglin Air Force Base. The general then received orders assigning him to the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, from which he graduated in June 1955. His next assignment was director of war plans, Allied Air Forces in Central Europe at Fontainebleau, France. In February 1956, he returned to the United States as commander, 308th Bomb Wing, Hunter Air Force Base, Ga.
In January 1958, General Tibbets was reassigned to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., where he assumed command of the 6th Air Division. He is a rated command pilot.
In February 1961, General Tibbets was assigned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force as director of management analysis (redesignated as Directorate of Status Analysis effective March 27, 1961).
In July 1962, General Tibbets was assigned to the Joint Staff, Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as deputy director for operations, J-3. In June 1963, with reorganization of the Operations Directorate, Joint Staff, General Tibbets became deputy director for the National Military Command System.
Because of this mans mission I was born, my father was in the Royal Air Force in the Far East and would not have been home if this war had not finished.
To accuse this of war crimes is a disgrace, the people who have accussed him must remember without people like him the Germans and Japanse would have won the war. In war you must go all out to win or you loss, somthing modern times seems to have forgot.
May you rest in peace, I hope you meet my dad up there, he will want to thank you for getting him home sooner, thats if he had survided the war.
“Why is a very clueless individual. He judges with emotion, not logic“
I use logic.
BTW, I haven’t served because as a mathematician I consider myself more usefull doing research.
Axiom: Non-agression principle
No one should start the use of force against people or properties.
If started, legitimate defense is the response.
Contracts as an interchange of properties should be enforced if not it would be considered a theft.
So, if the 80.000 innocents nuked hadn’t done anything to you, and you attacked them, you would be the one started the use of force.
No emotions here.
Now I want to know your logic.
I want to know when it is ok to deliberately kill innocents. Please explain it to me with logic no emotions.
“War is Hell” that is why, now please take your debate to a chat room or something. A great American died and all you can do is debate on how bad you think his mission was, dang dude you need to get out more.
Innocents? What is an innocent in Total War? Would the 30,000 workers building warships in Mobile, AL be innocents or the thousands of workers building heavy bombers in Detroit, MI.?
Strategically, they are ever bit as important to the war effort as a Bomber Wing or an Army Corp.
The “innocents” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, unfortunately, had the same strategic value to the Japanese as our American “inncents”!
I really don’t know what a hero is, however, I am leaning toward men that willingly gives their lives to save others. Tibbets was a classic American. He was called upon to do a job, he did it without complaining, and came home when the job was done.
I hope for our future’s sake that America will continue to produce such men.
RIP General Tibbits
“If you’re a mathematician, I suspect you’re not a very good one. In your hypothesis, you’ve already produced a trivial result by applying incorrect initial and boundary conditions to the problem. You talk about “innocents”, yet numerous people have pointed out that you’ve misapplied the term. You talk about non-aggression, but ignore the broader context of WW2 and the history of Japanese aggression“
You do not get it.
When is it ok to nuke a city full of civilians?
Should the occupied france had been nuked because there were some nazi tank divisiones stationed there? And so all the towns and cities in Europe?
If there is a killer in a building, would you support nuking the city, so the killer would not escape the police and kill again?
If there is a kidnapper in a schoold? would you bomb it so the kidnapper won’t be able to escape and kill in the future?
If the answer is no, why?
Maybe because there are innocent people?
So, the police in these cases try to save the innocents, while trying to catch the bad guys and its ok, but in the military case, you killed the innocents, so the bad guys do not escape, although you came all the way there to stop them killing innocents, and you achieve that killing innocents? That’s ilogical.
The same way you could have nuked half Europe because there were panzer divisions stationed there.
Oh, you are going to say that you do numbers and stadistics and then you decide.
Tell us the magic number, how many innocent civilians is ok to incinerated to save the live of a U.S soldier? What’s the rate? When is it ok and when to much?
The same question is critical to law, how many innocents are you ready to send to jail so that a criminal does not get away? I’m for 0. You find another way. There are thing that should not be done, like torture, like bombing civilians.
And you should know that.
@WHY
Read what Tibbets himself said
Ignore “Why” and he’ll go away. He is like a shark, you feed him he multiplies. Stop feeding him, he’s too stupid to learn and too young to be educated. He just loves to be the Devil.
in war you do what you have to
the General is an american hero
in war you do what you have to
the General is an american hero
I don’t understand how the bombing of Hiroshima could be regarded as anything other than a necessary, and regrettable, evil. But those were ugly times, with a different mindset, which I pray we do not see again. Paul Tibbets did what he had to do, in a calm, professional and dignified manner which he retained to the end of his life. For that he does deserve the highest praise.
In response to: (Posted by: why at November 2, 2007 04:52 PM)you asked the very important question “Tell us the magic number, how many innocent civilians is ok to incinerated to save the live of a U.S soldier? What’s the rate? When is it ok and when too much?” Well the “Magic Number” is HOWEVER MANY IT TAKES…all lives are precious but American Lives are even more precious — you fail to understand your history in that the Japanese people were committed to their war effort. The estimated 1 million American servicemen who would have perished in the Japanese mainland invasion would likely have killed my grandfather and yours, thus eliminating our current debate. The attacks using nuclear devices were warranted because it saved countless American soldiers, and other Japanese civilian lives that would have been destroyed in the impending invasion of Japan. War is harsh, so don’t start them…but when they are started WIN THEM, at all costs!
General Tibbets had in his life heard the critics, we’ve always had them. But if he would have been torn in anyway about his duty, his job that had to be done then it would not have been successful. Who would have the Japanese attacked next? America. Our mainland American soil has never been attacked after the civil war. Because America has always had a strong defense and arms so destructive no nation dared to attempt it. But America is changing. Why? Because we have members of Congress listening to anti-Americans, anti-war activist and they’ve forgotten their history. General Tibbets is a hero because he did his duty. Just like our young men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. May g0d bless them all.
Honor to whom honor is due. Paul Tibbets was a great American soldier who did his duty to God and Country. On this Veterans Day, Nov.11, 2007 may this great man be remembered for his great feat during WWII. General Douglas MacArthur said, “Victory then Peace” and all the people said Amen.
For God & Country
Ruth Ann Wilson
i like pie