Until his death last week at age 92, Paul Tibbetts never expressed any regret, remorse or indeed any emotional reaction at all to what became the defining event in his life as far as most human beings were concerned.
Paul Tibbets was the pilot of Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare.
National Public Radio's website contains some of the most straightforward accounts of Tibbet's life and it includes some links to related stories. There are plenty of other commentaries out there, including a simple one by Bob Schieffer of CBS News.
Tibbetts was unfashionable in his views on the atomic bombs, but the man who died in relative obscurity was consistently frank in his views. They remained the same at his death as they were when he was handed the job of getting ready for the mission in 1944:
"I thought to myself, 'Gee, if we can be successful, we're going to prove to the Japanese the futility in continuing to fight because we can use those weapons on them. They're not going to stand up to this thing. After I saw what I saw I was more convinced that they're gonna quit. That's the only way I could do it,'" he told Morning Edition.
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