Paul Tibbets Research Paper

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Nathan Cox HIS 122 Paul Tibbets Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born on Febuary 23, 1915, in Quincy, IL. His father was a salesman in a family grocery business. His mother, the former Enola Gay Haggard, grew up on an Iowa farm and was named for a character in a novel her father was reading shortly before she was born. The family moved to Miami, and at age 12 Tibbets took a ride with a barnstorming pilot who dropped Baby Ruth candy bars on the Hialeah race track in a promotional stunt for the Curtiss Candy Company. He was thrilled by the flight, and though his father wanted him to become a doctor, his mother encouraged him to pursue that dream. After attending the University of Arizona and University of Cincinnati, he joined the Army Air Corps in 1937. On August 17 1942, he led a dozen B-17 Flying Fortresses on the first daylight raid by an American squadron on German-occupied Europe, bombing railroad marshaling yards in the French city of Rouen. He flew General Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gibraltar in November 1942 en route to the launching of Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, and participated in the first bombing missions of that campaign.…show more content…
Leslie R. Groves Jr., who oversaw the Manhattan Project said that Colonel Tibbets had been selected to train the crews because “he was a superb pilot of heavy planes, with years of military flying experience, and was probably as familiar with the B-29 as anyone in the service.” (Tibbets 1989) He took command of the newly created 509th Composite Group, a unit of 1,800 men who trained amid extraordinary security at Wendover Field in

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