ENOLA GAY CREW (PAUL W. TIBBETS) - TYPESCRIPT SIGNED - HFSID 149209

ATOMIC BOMB: PAUL W. TIBBETS
Copy of orders from Deputy Chief of Staff Thomas Handy, dated July 25, 1945, regarding the atomic attacks on Japan, signed by Tibbets.
Typescript signed: "Paul W. Tibbets", 1p, 8x10. War Department, Office of the Chief of Staff, Washington, D.C., July 25, 1945. Reproduction of orders from United States Deputy Chief of Staff Thomas T. Handy to General Carl Spaatz (here "Spaats"), Commanding General of the Army Strategic Air Forces. This document contains a number of details not generally known about the atomic attacks on Japan during World War II. The 509 Composite Group of the 20th Air Force was to deliver its first "special bomb" as soon as weather permitted after Aug. 3, 1945 for visual bombing to one of four different cities. Niigata and Kokura were on this list of cities as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It continues: "Additional bombs will be delivered as soon as made ready by the project staff." The Enola Gay, a modified B-29, dropped the world's first atomic bomb used in war. United States Army Air Force Colonel Paul W. Tibbets was responsible for the organization, training and command of the world's first nuclear strike force. On the morning of August 6, 1945, Colonel Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress named after his mother, on its mission to drop the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. 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) hastened the surrender of Japan, ending WWII. Physicist Norman Ramsey, who went on to win a Nobel Prize for development of the atomic clock, supervised the transfer of the atomic bomb components from Los Alamos to Tinian, the island where the Enola Gay was based. Fine condition.