I am Carbon
shade tree mechanic
Quite a interview with details on the project that I have not heard before
> Take the time to read this. It is very interesting.
>
>
> Here's a bit of American history yet to reach the history books -- an August
> 2002 interview by writer Studs Terkel with Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the
> B-29 that dropped the first atom bomb. It's fascinating.
>
> Studs was a Chicago based newspaper & TV columnist and I read some of his stuff in which he was a working mans historian. Ole _____
>
> The Manhattan Project (Off-The-Cuff Interview)
>
>
> Studs Terkel: We're seated here, two old gaffers. Me and Paul Tibbets, 89
> years old, brigadier-general retired, in his home town of Columbus, Ohio,
> where has lived for many years.
>
> Paul Tibbets: Hey, you've got to correct that. I'm only 87. You said 89.
>
> ST: I know. See, I'm 90. So I got you beat by three years. Now we've had
> a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. I noticed as we sat in that
> restaurant, people passed by. They didn't know who you were. But once upon
> a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in
> Japan, on a Sunday morning - August 6 1945 - and a bomb fell. It was the
> atomic bomb, the first ever. And that particular moment changed the whole
> world around. You were the pilot of that plane.
>
> PT: Yes, I was the pilot.
>
> ST: And the Enola Gay was named after...
>
> PT: My mother. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my
> dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles.
> When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the Army
> Air Corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you
> automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on,
> you're on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give
> a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly
> airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that.
>
> ST: Where was that?
>
> PT: Well, that was Miami, Florida. My dad had been in the real estate
> business down there for years, and at that time he was retired. And I was
> going to school at Gainesville, Florida, but I had to leave after two years
> and go to Cincinnati because Florida had no medical school.
>
> ST: You were thinking of being a doctor?
>
> PT: I didn't think that, my father thought it. He said, "You're going to be
> a doctor," and I just nodded my head and that was it. And I started out
> that way; but about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly
> it - I soloed - and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes.
>
> ST: Now by 1944 you were a pilot - a test pilot on the program to develop
> the B-29 bomber. When did you get word that you had a special assignment?
>
> PT: One day [in September 1944] I'm running a test on a B-29, I land, a man
> meets me. He says he just got a call from General Uzal Ent [commander of
> the Second Air Force] at Colorado Springs, he wants me in his office the
> next morning at nine o'clock. He said, "Bring your clothing - your B4 bag -
> because you're not coming back." Well, I didn't know what it was and didn't
> pay any attention to it - it was just another assignment.
>
> I got to Colorado Springs the next morning perfectly on time. A man named
> Lansdale met me, walked me to General Ent's office and closed the door
> behind me. With him was a man wearing a blue suit, a US Navy captain - that
> was William Parsons, who flew with me to Hiroshima - and Dr Norman Ramsey,
> Columbia University professor in nuclear physics. And Norman said: "OK,
> we've got what we call the Manhattan Project. What we're doing is trying to
> develop an atomic bomb. We've gotten to the point now where we can't go
> much further till we have airplanes to work with."
>
> He gave me an explanation which probably lasted 45, 50 minutes, and they
> left. General Ent looked at me and said, "The other day, General Arnold
> [Commander General of the Army Air Corps] offered me three names." Both of
> the others were full colonels; I was a lieutenant-colonel. He said that
> when General Arnold asked which of them could do this atomic weapons deal,
> he replied without hesitation, "Paul Tibbets is the man to do it." I said,
> "Well, thank you, sir." Then he laid out what was going on and it was up to
> me now to put together an organisation and train them to drop atomic weapons
> on both Europe and the Pacific - Tokyo.
>
> ST: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We
> didn't know that.
>
> PT: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and
> the Pacific because of the secrecy problem - you couldn't drop it in one
> part of the world without dropping it in the other. And so he said, "I
> don't know what to tell you, but I know you happen to have B-29s to start
> with. I've got a squadron in training in Nebraska - they have the best
> record so far of anybody we've got. I want you to go visit them, look at
> them, talk to them, do whatever you want. If they don't suit you, we'll get
> you some more." He said: "There's nobody could tell you what you have to do
> because nobody knows. If we can do anything to help you, ask me." I said,
> "Thank you very much." He said, "Paul, be careful how you treat this
> responsibility, because if you're successful you'll probably be called a
> hero. And if you're unsuccessful, you might wind up in prison."
>
> ST: Did you know the power of an atomic bomb? Were you told about that?
>
> PT: No, I didn't know anything at that time. But I knew how to put an
> organisation together. He said, "Go take a look at the bases, and call me
> back and tell me which one you want." I wanted to get back to Grand Island,
> Nebraska, that's where my wife and two kids were, where my laundry was done
> and all that stuff. But I thought, "Well, I'll go to Wendover [Army
> Airfield, in Utah] first and see what they've got." As I came in over the
> hills, I saw it was a beautiful spot. It had been a final staging place for
> units that were going through combat crew training, and the guys ahead of me
> were the last P-47 fighter outfit. This lieutenant-colonel in charge said,
> "We've just been advised to stop here and I don't know what you want to
> do... but if it has anything to do with this base, it's the most perfect
> base I've ever been on. You've got full machine shops, everybody's
> qualified, they know what they want to do. It's a good place."
>
> ST: And now you chose your own crew.
>
> PT: Well, I had mentally done it before that. I knew right away I was going
> to get Tom Ferebee [the Enola Gay's bombardier] and Theodore "Dutch" van
> Kirk [navigator] and Wyatt Duzenbury [flight engineer].
>
> ST: Guys you had flown with in Europe?
>
> PT: Yeah.
>
> ST: And now you're training. And you're also talking to physicists like
> Robert Oppenheimer [senior scientist on the Manhattan project].
>
> PT: I think I went to Los Alamos [the Manhattan project HQ] three times, and
> each time I got to see Dr Oppenheimer working in his own environment.
> Later, thinking about it, here's a young man, a brilliant person. And he's
> a chain smoker and he drinks cocktails. And he hates fat men. And General
> Leslie Groves [the general in charge of the Manhattan project], he's a fat
> man, and he hates people who smoke and drink. The two of them are the
> first, original odd couple.
>
> ST: They had a feud, Groves and Oppenheimer?
>
> PT: Yeah, but neither one of them showed it. Each one of them had a job to
> do.
>
> ST: Did Oppenheimer tell you about the destructive nature of the bomb?
>
> PT: No.
>
> ST: How did you know about that?
>
> PT: >From Dr Ramsey. He said "The only thing we can tell you about it is,
> it's going to explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT." I'd never seen
> 1 lb of TNT blow up. I'd never heard of anybody who'd seen 100 lbs of TNT
> blow up. All I felt was that this was gonna be one hell of a big bang.
>
> ST: Twenty thousand tons - that's equivalent to how many planes full of
> bombs?
>
> PT: Well, I think the two bombs that we used [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] had
> more power than all the bombs the Air Force had used during the war on
> Europe.
>
> Take the time to read this. It is very interesting.
>
>
> Here's a bit of American history yet to reach the history books -- an August
> 2002 interview by writer Studs Terkel with Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the
> B-29 that dropped the first atom bomb. It's fascinating.
>
> Studs was a Chicago based newspaper & TV columnist and I read some of his stuff in which he was a working mans historian. Ole _____
>
> The Manhattan Project (Off-The-Cuff Interview)
>
>
> Studs Terkel: We're seated here, two old gaffers. Me and Paul Tibbets, 89
> years old, brigadier-general retired, in his home town of Columbus, Ohio,
> where has lived for many years.
>
> Paul Tibbets: Hey, you've got to correct that. I'm only 87. You said 89.
>
> ST: I know. See, I'm 90. So I got you beat by three years. Now we've had
> a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. I noticed as we sat in that
> restaurant, people passed by. They didn't know who you were. But once upon
> a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in
> Japan, on a Sunday morning - August 6 1945 - and a bomb fell. It was the
> atomic bomb, the first ever. And that particular moment changed the whole
> world around. You were the pilot of that plane.
>
> PT: Yes, I was the pilot.
>
> ST: And the Enola Gay was named after...
>
> PT: My mother. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my
> dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles.
> When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the Army
> Air Corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you
> automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on,
> you're on your own. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give
> a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly
> airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that.
>
> ST: Where was that?
>
> PT: Well, that was Miami, Florida. My dad had been in the real estate
> business down there for years, and at that time he was retired. And I was
> going to school at Gainesville, Florida, but I had to leave after two years
> and go to Cincinnati because Florida had no medical school.
>
> ST: You were thinking of being a doctor?
>
> PT: I didn't think that, my father thought it. He said, "You're going to be
> a doctor," and I just nodded my head and that was it. And I started out
> that way; but about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly
> it - I soloed - and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes.
>
> ST: Now by 1944 you were a pilot - a test pilot on the program to develop
> the B-29 bomber. When did you get word that you had a special assignment?
>
> PT: One day [in September 1944] I'm running a test on a B-29, I land, a man
> meets me. He says he just got a call from General Uzal Ent [commander of
> the Second Air Force] at Colorado Springs, he wants me in his office the
> next morning at nine o'clock. He said, "Bring your clothing - your B4 bag -
> because you're not coming back." Well, I didn't know what it was and didn't
> pay any attention to it - it was just another assignment.
>
> I got to Colorado Springs the next morning perfectly on time. A man named
> Lansdale met me, walked me to General Ent's office and closed the door
> behind me. With him was a man wearing a blue suit, a US Navy captain - that
> was William Parsons, who flew with me to Hiroshima - and Dr Norman Ramsey,
> Columbia University professor in nuclear physics. And Norman said: "OK,
> we've got what we call the Manhattan Project. What we're doing is trying to
> develop an atomic bomb. We've gotten to the point now where we can't go
> much further till we have airplanes to work with."
>
> He gave me an explanation which probably lasted 45, 50 minutes, and they
> left. General Ent looked at me and said, "The other day, General Arnold
> [Commander General of the Army Air Corps] offered me three names." Both of
> the others were full colonels; I was a lieutenant-colonel. He said that
> when General Arnold asked which of them could do this atomic weapons deal,
> he replied without hesitation, "Paul Tibbets is the man to do it." I said,
> "Well, thank you, sir." Then he laid out what was going on and it was up to
> me now to put together an organisation and train them to drop atomic weapons
> on both Europe and the Pacific - Tokyo.
>
> ST: Interesting that they would have dropped it on Europe as well. We
> didn't know that.
>
> PT: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and
> the Pacific because of the secrecy problem - you couldn't drop it in one
> part of the world without dropping it in the other. And so he said, "I
> don't know what to tell you, but I know you happen to have B-29s to start
> with. I've got a squadron in training in Nebraska - they have the best
> record so far of anybody we've got. I want you to go visit them, look at
> them, talk to them, do whatever you want. If they don't suit you, we'll get
> you some more." He said: "There's nobody could tell you what you have to do
> because nobody knows. If we can do anything to help you, ask me." I said,
> "Thank you very much." He said, "Paul, be careful how you treat this
> responsibility, because if you're successful you'll probably be called a
> hero. And if you're unsuccessful, you might wind up in prison."
>
> ST: Did you know the power of an atomic bomb? Were you told about that?
>
> PT: No, I didn't know anything at that time. But I knew how to put an
> organisation together. He said, "Go take a look at the bases, and call me
> back and tell me which one you want." I wanted to get back to Grand Island,
> Nebraska, that's where my wife and two kids were, where my laundry was done
> and all that stuff. But I thought, "Well, I'll go to Wendover [Army
> Airfield, in Utah] first and see what they've got." As I came in over the
> hills, I saw it was a beautiful spot. It had been a final staging place for
> units that were going through combat crew training, and the guys ahead of me
> were the last P-47 fighter outfit. This lieutenant-colonel in charge said,
> "We've just been advised to stop here and I don't know what you want to
> do... but if it has anything to do with this base, it's the most perfect
> base I've ever been on. You've got full machine shops, everybody's
> qualified, they know what they want to do. It's a good place."
>
> ST: And now you chose your own crew.
>
> PT: Well, I had mentally done it before that. I knew right away I was going
> to get Tom Ferebee [the Enola Gay's bombardier] and Theodore "Dutch" van
> Kirk [navigator] and Wyatt Duzenbury [flight engineer].
>
> ST: Guys you had flown with in Europe?
>
> PT: Yeah.
>
> ST: And now you're training. And you're also talking to physicists like
> Robert Oppenheimer [senior scientist on the Manhattan project].
>
> PT: I think I went to Los Alamos [the Manhattan project HQ] three times, and
> each time I got to see Dr Oppenheimer working in his own environment.
> Later, thinking about it, here's a young man, a brilliant person. And he's
> a chain smoker and he drinks cocktails. And he hates fat men. And General
> Leslie Groves [the general in charge of the Manhattan project], he's a fat
> man, and he hates people who smoke and drink. The two of them are the
> first, original odd couple.
>
> ST: They had a feud, Groves and Oppenheimer?
>
> PT: Yeah, but neither one of them showed it. Each one of them had a job to
> do.
>
> ST: Did Oppenheimer tell you about the destructive nature of the bomb?
>
> PT: No.
>
> ST: How did you know about that?
>
> PT: >From Dr Ramsey. He said "The only thing we can tell you about it is,
> it's going to explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT." I'd never seen
> 1 lb of TNT blow up. I'd never heard of anybody who'd seen 100 lbs of TNT
> blow up. All I felt was that this was gonna be one hell of a big bang.
>
> ST: Twenty thousand tons - that's equivalent to how many planes full of
> bombs?
>
> PT: Well, I think the two bombs that we used [at Hiroshima and Nagasaki] had
> more power than all the bombs the Air Force had used during the war on
> Europe.
>