Paul Tibbets dies at 92

[BarTopDancer]

Originally Posted by Alex

And even if the act were right, I don't know that being able to sleep soundly after killing that many people is necessarily a good thing. Being able to live with it is fine but to not be bothered by it?

In the article linked, Tibbets talked about rumors that he went crazy, became a drunk or committed suicide. None of those thoughts would be unreasonable to think. His options came down to accept it and live with it for it is what it is vs. live with it and be bothered by it, the first is really the only way to stay sane.

[flippyshark]

I'll be visiting Peace Park in Nagasaki in February, for reasons I plan to write about later, but expect a trip report in a few months time.

[Gemini Cricket]

I don't know if this is urban legend or not, but I remember reading/hearing a story about a woman who had the stitched design of her kimono burned into her skin. For some reason, that image is burned into my mind.

[Gemini Cricket]

Okay, one last thing and then I'm done with this thread. I'm getting all gloomy...

Little Boy, which had been dropped from the Enola Gay at 8:15:30, exploded 43 sec. later, at 1,900 ft. above Hiroshima, creating a blinding bluish-white flash and, for a fraction of a second, unearthly heat. Temperatures near the hypocenter, the ground point immediately below the explosion, surged to figures ranging from 5400 degrees F to 7200 degrees F; within a mile of the hypocenter, the surfaces of objects instantly rose to more than 1000 degrees F. Those caught in the middle of this maelstrom were the lucky ones. They died instantly, vaporized into puffs of smoke or carbonized into small, blackened, smoking corpses, mummified in their last living gesture.
People farther away from the source of the thermal wave were destined for longer agonies. The intense heat melted the eyeballs of some who had stared in wonder at the blast; it burned off facial features and seared skin all over the body into peeling, draping strips. The survivors who first emerged out of the roiling inferno that the center of Hiroshima had become walked like automatons, their arms held forward, hands dangling. In shock, they instinctively tried to keep their burned skin from touching anything, including themselves. They stumbled toward the riverbanks, some crying out, "Mizu, mizu!" (Water, water); the temperature and their injuries had left them severely dehydrated. Because light colors reflect heat and dark ones absorb it, some bomb victims had the images of their clothing tattooed on their flesh: the pattern of a kimono on a woman's back, the unburned swath left by a sash around the waist of an otherwise charred man. "Big black flies appeared and tried to lay eggs on human flesh," says survivor Michiko Watanabe, now 65. "The injured were so weak that they couldn't brush away the flies that nestled in their hands and necks. Some were black from a blanket of flies that covered them."

Source

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

I killed a cricket (yes, I know... the irony!) the other day because it was loud and annoying and drowning out my TV set.

Come over to our place some time. We buy full grown crickets 1,000 at a time, every two weeks.

Originally Posted by Gemini Cricket

I don't know if this is urban legend or not, but I remember reading/hearing a story about a woman who had the stitched design of her kimono burned into her skin. For some reason, that image is burned into my mind.

I found this

[Capt Jack]

my mom was living in one of the primary targets for the first (or maybe it was the 2nd) nuke dropped but was passed over for bad weather.

if not for that, I'd be ...well....non-existant

[blueerica]

CJ - I'll have to talk to you about where your mom was living. It's an amazing story, and from what I understand, I have some family I haven't met from there...

To me, as I stated earlier, you can't change the past and we must live in the present. To me, I spend probably too much time pondering the imponderables, like weather, like an idea to do something to possibly prevent something... how that could have changed history is about as interesting as history, itself, is it not?

[Capt Jack]

Three days after Hiroshima, the B-29 bomber, "Bockscar" piloted by Sweeney, reached the sky over Kokura on the morning of August 9 but abandoned the primary target because of smoke cover and changed course for Nagasaki.

so yeah, guess it was the 2nd. she would have been 12 years old at the time

beyond knowing I have relatives there, I know nada about them. I think I saw one or two pictures of her family when I was little, but she was for the most part ostracized by the culture after marrying my dad. so pretty much the ties were broken eons ago.

[Tramspotter]

I met Gen Tibbets and interviewed several WWII Veterans in the pacific theater.
When Speaking on the topic Gen Tibbets Position on why he was at peace with the decision to drop the bomb was that the culture of the Japanese empire at the time allowed for no compromise, no surrender, and total aligance to their equally honor bound emperor they would have by most accounts fought to nearly the last civilian had we tried to take their homeland. The necessity for the second bomb proves at least the leadership willing to sacrifice vast civilian casualty's.

It was also generally agreed on by the vets that If our carriers weren't by happenstance all out of pearl harbor at the time of the attack the conventional naval war likely would have not been turned to our favor either.