Editorials & Other Articles

Col. Paul W. Tibbets, lead pilot of the Enola Gay: We were only eight minutes off the ground when Capt. William S. “Deak” Parsons and Lt. Morris R. Jeppson lowered themselves into the bomb bay to insert a slug of uranium and the conventional explosive charge into the core of the strange-looking weapon. I wondered why we were calling it ‘‘Little Boy.” Little Boy was 28 inches in diameter and 12 feet long. Its weight was a little more than 9,000 pounds. With its coat of dull gunmetal paint, it was an ugly monster.

Tibbets: There was a startling sensation that I remember quite vividly to this day. My teeth told me, more emphatically than my eyes, of the Hiroshima explosion. At the moment of the blast, there was a tingling sensation in my mouth and the very definite taste of lead upon my tongue. This, I was told later by scientists, was the result of electrolysis — an interaction between the fillings in my teeth and the radioactive forces that were loosed by the bomb.

Sweeney: My tail gunner, Pappy Dehart, began uttering gibberish over the intercom. In combat, a gunner has to report what he sees precisely, distinctly and once, and then wait for the pilot’s acknowledgment. Pappy, an experienced gunner, was now running over his own words, his alarm garbling what he was saying. I tried to break in. “Pappy, say again.” I soon realized that Pappy was trying to describe a sight no human being had ever seen.