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"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm 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. It was, he said, his patriotic duty - the right thing to do. Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible." The crew of the B-29 called the Enola Gay had no regrets about dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but prayed that the horrific weapon would never be used again. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. "I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets had told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on the 60th anniversary of the bomb. The light weight summer flying suit was worn by myself and the members of my crew while on the first atomic mission.I was pilot of the. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war. 75 years ago today, a Northumberland Borough resident operated as flight navigator aboard the Enola Gay as it took off on a mission to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others. But once upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan, on a Sunday morning - Augand a bomb fell. It was the morning of August 6, 1945, when the aircraft and its crew of 14 dropped the five-tonne "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima. For myself, I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole. It was the first time man had used nuclear weaponry against his fellow man. It was named Enola Gay after the pilots mother. Tibbets's historic mission in the aeroplane Enola Gay marked the beginning of the end of the second world war. "It's end of an era," said Newhouse, who served as Tibbets's manager for 10 years.
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Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, Newhouse said. planned and led by primarily by the 509th Group CO, pilot Paul Tibbets. Paul Tibbets died at his Columbus home in the United States after a two month decline in his physical condition stemming from a variety of health problems, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend. Dutch Van Kirk, the navigator from the B-29 Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped.