But when Tibbets died at age 92, he requested cremation with no headstone – and no funeral - military honors or not. Robert Lewis, of the 509th Composite Group, from the factory to New Mexico, then to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. His grandson is an Air Force Academy graduate who came up flying B-2 Spirit bombers. This is the original B-29 bomber plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima now an exhibit at an aviation museum at Washington Dulles Airport. 82 then, was flown by Army Air Forces Capt. Eddie, New York, US The 9th August 1945 attack on Nagasaki was carried out by a B29 Superfortress flown by Major Charles Sweeney of the. His family was also a proud military family. The Enola Gay dropped the bomb 'Little Boy' on Hiroshima. He even re-enacted the bombing in a B-29 during a 1976 Texas air show and denounced the Smithsonian’s exhibition of the actual plane when it debuted because of the exhibition’s focus on the suffering of the Japanese people and not the brutality of the Japanese military. What was the name of the back up B-29 that flew to Iwo Jima and remained on standby during the Hiroshima mission in the event that the Enola Gay had to abort and transfer Little Boy for completion of the atomic bomb mission. He proudly named his airplane Enola Gay after his beloved mother. What was the name of the plane that was Enola Gay’s backup by mandykinne.
At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, he was one of the youngest but most experienced pilots in the Army Air Forces. The Enola Gay was built under a program code named Silverplate to produce B-29 bombers specially modified for atomic. It wasn’t that Tibbets wasn’t proud of his service. The Enola Gay is remembered today as being the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan nearly seventy-five years ago, and its infamous flight has been the subject of much debate. But instead of being interred at home or at Arlington National Cemetery with all his brothers in arms, he was cremated and his ashes spread across the English Channel. He was the man who dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat against an enemy city. He was never forgotten, however, and never would be.
When Paul Tibbets died in January 2007, he had been retired from the Air Force since 1966.