Enola Gay - your boy as passed away.

[sluffy]

Those of us of a certain age may remember the song Enola Gay by OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). The song was about the dropping of the first ever atom bomb on Hiroshima. The pilot of the plane, which dropped the bomb, was called General Paul Tibbits and the plane he flew that day - a B-29 - was named after his mother - Enola Gay.

Well the reason I am remernising is that General Tibbits died today aged 92.


Gen Tibbets (centre)

For anyone who may be interested the BBC as written quite an interesting obituary about him - General Tibbits possibly killed more people in one go than anybody else - and had to life with that fact for the next sixty years - he must have had an incredibly strong character - RIP.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7073441.stm

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Can't belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeve they 're-enacted' the bombing in Texas!!

[Bruce Rioja]

The pilot of the plane, which dropped the bomb, was called General Paul Tibbits and the plane he flew that day - a B-29 - was named after his mother - Enola Gay.

Well the reason I am remernising is that General Tibbits died today aged 92.

And I hope that the c*nt never got a single minutes sleep from that day to this!

[sluffy]

Yes Bruce - that was my point - even though he truly believed he did the right thing (or that is my take on him from the obituary) - he had to live the next 60 odd years knowing the pain and suffering he had done to many, many people - mostly innocent civilians I guess.

I personally could not have lived comfortably with that myself - even believing that I had saved hundreds if not thousands of allied troops (US forces) lives from having to invade the mainland of Japan.

Oh and as for the graphic (albeit relevant) pictures you have posted Bruce - weren't you the one that took me to task for simply posting a picture of Cisse breaking his leg?

I certainly know which pictures are more horrific to look at and it isn't the one of a football player with part of his leg protruding at a funny angle!

[Dujon]

Bruce, I'm not going to get into some deep and meaningful discussion on your comment as I'm not that qualified to make my own apart from sporadic reading.

I would ask you though to think about the difference(s) between the two atomic bombs and the air raids over Europe - the latter by, initially, the British and then the combined forces of Britain and America.

Estimates of the total number of dead in Berlin from air raids range from 20,000 to 50,000: current German studies suggest the lower figure is more likely.[22] This compares to death tolls of between 25,000 and 35,000 in the single attack on Dresden on 14 February 1945, and the 40,000 killed at Hamburg in a single raid in 1943.

I acknowledge that the source is not always reliable, given what it is, but from earlier readings I have no reason to doubt these estimates.

To be brutally honest I cannot see any difference at all apart from the fact that America lost no flight crews in it's attack on mainland Japan and the allied forces lost thousands during the period of air attacks over Europe.

[H. Pedersen]

Had the pleasure of meeting him about ten years ago. Have a signed print of the Enola Gay that he signed up on the wall actually. Say what you want, the man probably saved my grandfather's life.

How about some pictures of Nanking and the Japanese POW camps for balance?

[WhiteArmy]

Had the pleasure of meeting him about ten years ago. Have a signed print of the Enola Gay that he signed up on the wall actually. Say what you want, the man probably saved my grandfather's life.

How about some pictures of Nanking and the Japanese POW camps for balance?

Let's not get drawn into a tit for tat HP, the fact is General Tibbits was a soldier, taking orders like millions of others on both sides at that time.

I'd prefer to just attend the Remembrance Day function as per usual and remember them all, both sides.

RIP.

[libreg]

Actually, Tibbits was an asshole. He said the fact that he killed so many people didn't bother him very much, or that he didn't lose sleep. I feel very sorry for all the people he killed, and the side effects the radiation had. It's terrible. The thing is though, war is a terrible, ugly thing. If he hadn't killed them, someone else would have. It was up to the commander in chief. Either way, the same event would have resulted, in the end. And if hiroshima and nagasaki weren't bombed, the war wouldn't have ended, more killings would continue. Tis' a big shame so many innocent people had to die for the point to get across to the Japanese government, and for the war to end.

*sigh* it's 3 am here, I really have to get some sleep. Not to mention I have school in 4 hours....

[boltonboris]

Terrible thing, but from my understanding the Germans were almost fully developed on the nuclear scene. Kill or be killed...

[blurred]

I find your comment somewhat strange, Bruce...

[fatshaft]

Bruce, I'm kind of withj Dujon here. He was military personnel, someone had to fly the plane, the bomb would have gone anyway. More likely your target should be the man who gave the order, by all accounts the second bomb at least was just about unessecary.

On the other side of the coin, terrible as it is, what are the chances we'd have had WWIII fought with nuclear weapons if Nagasaki & hiroshima hadn't happened? Probably quite high, but once the world saw what could be done everyone pulled back, look at the Cuban missile crisis for example, everyone pushed the envelope, but still no-one would go over the edge. In the long run it'r probably saved more lives than it cost that day, but we'll never know.

[CAPSLOCK]

I'm with the yank

[CrazyHorse]

It was a terrible end to a terrible war.

Just read this (from Wiki).

The Tokyo control operator of the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation noticed that the Hiroshima station had gone off the air. He tried to re-establish his program by using another telephone line, but it too had failed. About twenty minutes later the Tokyo railroad telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From some small railway stops within 16 kilometers (10 mi) of the city came unofficial and confused reports of a terrible explosion in Hiroshima. All these reports were transmitted to the headquarters of the Japanese General Staff.

Military bases repeatedly tried to call the Army Control Station in Hiroshima. The complete silence from that city puzzled the men at headquarters; they knew that no large enemy raid had occurred and that no sizable store of explosives was in Hiroshima at that time. A young officer of the Japanese General Staff was instructed to fly immediately to Hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to Tokyo with reliable information for the staff. It was generally felt at headquarters that nothing serious had taken place and that it was all a rumor.

The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about three hours, while still nearly 100 miles (160 km) from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the bomb. In the bright afternoon, the remains of Hiroshima were burning. Their plane soon reached the city, around which they circled in disbelief. A great scar on the land still burning and covered by a heavy cloud of smoke was all that was left. They landed south of the city, and the staff officer, after reporting to Tokyo, immediately began to organize relief measures.

Tokyo's first knowledge of what had really caused the disaster came from the White House public announcement in Washington, D.C., sixteen hours after the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

By August 8, 1945, newspapers in the US were reporting that broadcasts from Radio Tokyo had described the destruction observed in Hiroshima. "Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death," Japanese radio announcers said in a broadcast captured by Allied sources.

[David Lee's Hair]

I'm in the not following Bruce bit here. He was following orders, that has to be done. War is a horrible thing, but like it or not you have to do what needs to be done. Personally, and I couldn't imagine being in that situation I'm sure it would effect me, perhaps that means I'm just not as strong willed as he was.

However as for him being viewed as evil (or a c*nt) why?Lets be honest though, as pointed out it's not the only dispicable thing done by the allies.



Victims of the firestorms that worked through Hamburg and other German cities point to that. Would that make every bomber commander who dropped a bomb evil?

[Zulus Thousand of em]

Talk is cheap. My father and other relatives, and relatives of yours, put their lives on the line for something they believed in at the time. I happen to believe that they were right, but I'm not going to get into a slanging match on here. I'll just state my opinion and withdraw.

The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of allied troops (and countless Japanese troops and civilians, by the way.) If you feel sorry for the victims of the raids spare a thought for the Allied prisoners-of war in the Far East, the Korean "comfort battalion" women and the Rape of Nanking, to mention just three shocking examples of the sordid Bushido code.

As for the inhabitants of Berlin, the Ruhr and Dresden? Check out Rotterdam, Warsaw, Stalingrad and the massacred Jewish population of Europe - not to mention the British cities which were the unwilling recipients of the blitz.

The Japanese and German public allowed their democracies to be overtaken by totalitarian states, due in the main to apathy. Sorry, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Paul Tibbetts was a brave and honourable man. RIP.

[TANGODANCER]

There is no honour in war. It is the single, saddest and most useless thing in the history of mankind.

[hisroyalgingerness]

There is no honour in war. It is the single, saddest and most useless thing in the history of mankind.

to quote a bit of classic Red Dwarf:

There are always casualties in war. If there were no casualties it would just be a rather nasty argument with lots of pushing and shoving

[Little Green Man]

Sorry, you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

Quite right too! If only they'd bombed Yokohama as well, then they might have got my sister-in-laws parents and I wouldn't have to worry about when her birthday is.

[H. Pedersen]

Well said Zulu.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Terrible thing, but from my understanding the Germans were almost fully developed on the nuclear scene. Kill or be killed...

Actually the Germans weren't - but the fear that they were gave real impetus to the Manhattan Project. Once the allies reached Essen it became clear the Germans were still years away from developing a workable prototype. In any case the bombs dropped on Japan were months after the German surrender. The simple fact is Truman made the decision to shorten the war or, put another way, save American lives. It was also fear of America being the only holder of the bomb and demonstrably willing to use it that caused scientists to give the necessary data to the Soviet Union. Better they thought a balance of power and a cold war than the possibility of atoms bombs being used in Korea or elsewhere. Looking back over 60 years I have to say that history has proved them right.