Document:
Recollections of
Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay
Source [link within this page]:
Report from Newsweek on the fiftieth anniversary of Hiroshima, 24th July 1995
Available online at the A-Bomb WWW Museum
Comments:
We need consider issues of time, memory and then reactions to the use of the bomb in considering this document.
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"A bright light filled the plane," wrote Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up, mushrooming." For a moment, no one spoke. Then everyone was talking. "Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!" exclaimed the co-pilot, Robert Lewis, pounding on Tibbets's shoulder. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission; it tasted like lead. Then he turned away to write in his journal. "My God," he asked himself, "what have we done?"