About Hiroshima

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Major Thomas Ferebee was the bombardier aboard the Enola Gay. He had been handpicked for the Hiroshima mission by Colonel Paul Tibbets, leader of the 509th Composite Group, with whom he had flown in Europe in the early days of the war. Tibbets called him, “The best damn bombardier in the USAAF.”

As Ferebee pushed the button, he was thinking, “This (the “T” shaped Aioi Bridge in the center of Hiroshima) is the best damn aiming point I’ve had in this whole &^%$% war.”

Ferebee had slept all the way to the target, and after a bit of a kerfuffle immediately after the explosion of “Little Boy,” he napped all the way back to Tinian. He attended the debriefing, skipped the celebratory party, returned to his room and went back to sleep. It was all in a day’s work.

It was a miracle that Major Ferebee was on this flight. Ferebee, Tibbets, and navigator Theodore van Kirk had flown together on the first American bombing mission over Europe; successfully attacked the German-held oil fields of Ploesti, Romania, and led the first bombing runs over North Africa.

Having flown sixty bombing missions, statistically, none of these officers had any business being alive to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima

 

 

 

[watab kid]

not to mention the weather that made them shift targets ,