ENOLA GAY CREW: PAUL W. TIBBETS
This historic color photograph, taken from the air, is of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima moments after the first atomic bombing in history. It's signed by Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the Hiroshima bomb nicknamed "Little Boy".
Photograph signed: "Paul Tibbets/Pilot B29 - Enola Gay/Hiroshima 8/6/945" in blue ink. With notation in unknown hand in blue ink. Color, 9¾x7¾. U.S. Air Force Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, who was responsible for the organization, training and command of the world's first nuclear strike force, piloted the Enola Gay on its historic mission to drop the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. "Little Boy", a uranium-235 bomb developed by the scientists at the highly secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, was released at an altitude of 31,060 feet and detonated at 1,400 feet, with an explosive force equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. The bomb killed 66,000 and injured 69,000 people, not including long-term victims of radiation exposure. However, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 9) certainly hastened Japan's decision to surrender. General Charles Willoughby, General MacArthur's chief of intelligence, estimated that an amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands, scheduled to begin on November 1, 1945, would have entailed one million American casualties, not to mention the horrific losses to Japanese soldiers and civilians. Tibbets (1915-2007, born in Quincy, Illinois) was a colonel when Hiroshima was destroyed and became a technical adviser on the United States' nuclear bomb tests after World War II. He retired a brigadier general in 1966 and worked in commercial aviation until 1986. Minor surface creases (not visible head on). Otherwise in fine condition.