THE BOMB #2

The interview continues:


Studs Terkel: And now you're training. And you're also talking to
physicists like Robert Oppenheimer [senior scientist on the
Manhattan project].

Paul Tibbets: I think I went to 0Los Alamos [the Manhattan project
HQ] three times, and each time I got to see Dr Oppenheimer working
in his own environment. Later, thinking about it, here's a young
man, a brilliant person. And he's a chain smoker and he drinks
cocktails. And he hates fat men. And General Leslie Groves [the
general in charge of the Manhattan project], he's a fat man, and
he hates people who smoke and drink. The two of them are the
first, original odd couple.

Studs Terkel: They had a feud, Groves and Oppenheimer?

Paul Tibbets: Yeah, but neither one of them showed it. Each one of
them had a job to do.

0A Studs Terkel: Did Oppenheimer tell you about the destructive
nature of the bomb?

Paul Tibbets: No.

Studs Terkel: How did you know about that?

Paul Tibbets: From Dr Ramsey. He said the only thing we can tell
you about it is, it's going to explode with the force of 20,000
tons of TNT. I'd never seen 1 lb of TNT blow up. I'd never heard
of anybody who'd seen 100 lbs of TNT blow up. All I felt was that
this was gonna be one hell of a big bang.

Studs Terkel: Twenty thousand tons - that's equivalent to how many
planes full of bombs?

Paul Tibbets: Well, I think the two bombs that we used [at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki ] had more power than all the bombs the air
force had used during the war in Europe ...

Studs Terkel: So Ramsey told you about the possibilities.

Paul Tibbets: Even though it was still theory, whatever those
guys told me, that's what happened.. So I was ready to say I
wanted to go to war, but I wanted to ask Oppenheimer how to get
away from the bomb after we dropped it. I told him that when we
had dropped bombs in Europe and North Africa , we'd flown straight
ahead after dropping them - which is also the trajectory of the
bomb. But what should we do this time? He said, "You can't fly
=0 Astraight ahead because you'd be right over the top when it blows
up and nobody would ever know you were there." He said I had to
turn tangent to the expanding shock wave. I said, "Well, I've had
some trigonometry, some physics. What is tangency in this case?"
He said it was 159 degrees in either direction. "Turn 159 degrees
as fast as you can and you'll be able to put yourself the greatest
distance from where the bomb exploded."

Studs Terkel: How many seconds did you have to make that turn?

Paul Tibbets: I had dropped enough practice bombs to realize that
the charges would blow around 1,500 ft in the air, so I would have
40 to 42 seconds to turn 159 degrees. I went back to Wendover as
quick as I could and took the airplane up. I got myself to 25,000
ft and I practiced turning, steeper, steeper, steeper and I got it
where I could pull it round in 40 seconds. The tail was shaking
dramatically and I was afraid of it breaking off, but I didn't
quit. That was my goal. And I practiced and practiced until,
without even thinking about it, I could do it in between 40 and
42, all the time. So, when that day came....

Studs Terkel: You got the go-ahead on August 5.

Paul Tibbets: Yeah. We were in Tinian [the US island base in the
Pacific] at the time we got the OK. They had sent this Norwegian
to the weather station out on Guam [the US 's westernmost
territory] and I had a copy of his report. We said that, based on
his forecast, the sixth day of August would be the best day that
we could get over Honshu [the island on which Hiroshima stands].
So we did everything that had to be done to get the crews ready to
go: airplane loaded, crews briefed, all of the things c hecked that
you have to check before you can fly over enemy territory. General
Groves had a brigadier-general who was connected back to
Washington DC by a special teletype machine. He stayed close to
that thing all th e time, notifying people back there, all by code,
that we were preparing these airplanes to go any time me after
midnight on the sixth. And that's the way it worked out. We were
ready to go at about four o'clock in the afternoon on the fifth
and we got word from the president that we were free to go: "Use
me as you wish." They give you a time you're supposed to drop your
bomb on target and that was 9:15 in the morning , but that was
Tinian time, one hour later than Japanese time. I told Dutch, "You
figure it out what time we have to start after midnight to be over
the target at 9 a.m."

Studs Terkel: That'd be Sunday morning.

Paul Tibbets: Well, we got going down the runway at right about
2:15 a.m. and we took off, we met our rendezvous guys, we made our
flight up to what we call the initial point, that would be a
geographic position that you could not mistake. Well, of course we
had the best one in the world with the rivers and bridges and that
big shrine. There was no mistaking what it was.

Studs Terkel: So you had to have the right navigator to get it on
the button.

Paul Tibbets: The airplane has a bomb sight connected to the
autopilot and the bombardier puts figures in there for where he
wants to be when he drops the weapon, and that's transmitted to
the airplane. We always took into account what would happen if we
had a failure and the bomb bay doors didn't open; we had a manual
release put in each airplane so it was right down by the
bombardier and he could pull on that. And the guys in the
airplanes that followed us to drop the instruments needed to know
when it was going to go. We were told not to use the radio, but,
hell, I had to. I told them I would say, "One minute out," "Thirty
seconds out," "Twenty seconds" and "Ten" and then I'd count,
"Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four seconds", which woul d give
them a time to drop their cargo. They knew what was going on
because they knew where we were. And that's exactly the way it
worked; it was absolutely perfect. After we got the airplanes in
formation I crawled into the tunnel and went back to tell the men,
I said, "You know what we're doing today?" They said, "Well, yeah,
we're going on a bombing mission." I said, "Yeah, we're going on a
bombing mission, but it's a little bit special." My tail gunner,
Bob Caron, was pretty alert. He said, "Colonel, we wouldn't be
playing with atoms today, would we?" I said, "Bob, you've got it
just exactly right." So I went back up in the front end and I told
the navigator, bombardier, flight engineer, in turn. I said, "OK,
this is an atom bomb we're dropping." They listened intently but I
didn't see any change in their faces or anything else.. Those guys
were no idiots. We'd been fiddling round with the most peculiar-
shaped things we'd ever seen. So we're coming down. We get to that
point where I say "one second" and by the time I'd got that second
out of my mouth the airplane had lurched, because 10,000 lbs had
come out of the front. I'm in this turn now, tight as I can get
it, that helps me hold my altitude and helps me hold my airspeed
and everything else a ll the way round. When I level out, the
nose is a little bit high and as I look up there the whole sky is
lit up in the prettiest blues and pinks I've ever seen in my life.
It was just great. I tell people I tasted it. "Well," they say,
"what do you mean?" When I was a child, if you had a cavity in
your tooth the dentist put some mixture of some cotton or whatever
it was and lead into your teeth and pounded them in with a hammer.
I learned that if I had a spoon of ice-cream and touched one of
those teeth I got this electrolysis and I got the taste of lead
out of it. And I knew right away what it was. OK,=2 0we're all going.
We had been briefed to stay off the radios: "Don't say a damn
word, what we do is we make this turn, we're going to get out of
here as fast as we can." I want to get out over the sea of Japan
because I know they can't find me over there. With that done we're
home free. Then Tom Ferebee has to fill out his bombardier's
report and Dutch, the navigator, has to fill out a log. Tom is
working on his log and says, "Dutch, what time were we over the
target?" And Dutch says, "Nine-fifteen plus 15 seconds." Ferebee
says: "What lousy navigating. Fifteen seconds off!"