Who was the bombadier on the enola gay
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He said, "Bring your clothing - your B4 bag - because you're not coming back." Well, I didn't know what it was and didn't pay any attention to it - it was just another assignment. He says he just got a call from General Uzal Ent at Colorado Springs, he wants me in his office the next morning at nine o'clock. PT: One day I'm running a test on a B-29, I land, a man meets me. When did you get word that you had a special assignment? ST: Now by 1944 you were a pilot - a test pilot on the programme to develop the B-29 bomber. And I started out that way but about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly it - I soloed - and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes. He said, "You're going to be a doctor," and I just nodded my head and that was it. PT: I didn't think that, my father thought it. And I was going to school at Gainesville, Florida, but I had to leave after two years and go to Cincinnati because Florida had no medical school.
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My dad had been in the real estate business down there for years, and at that time he was retired. If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don't give a damn." Then Mom just quietly said, "Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you're going to be all right." And that was that. When I told them I was going to leave college and go fly planes in the army air corps, my dad said, "Well, I've sent you through school, bought you automobiles, given you money to run around with the girls, but from here on, you're on your own. She was Enola Gay Haggard before she married my dad, and my dad never supported me with the flying - he hated airplanes and motorcycles.
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And that particular moment changed the whole world around. But once upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of Hiroshima, in Japan, on a Sunday morning - Augand a bomb fell. I noticed as we sat in that restaurant, people passed by. Now we've had a nice lunch, you and I and your companion. The song, on his cd "Recognition," remembers Ferebee as referring to "the one big thing" he'd done, noting he'd visited Japan after the war and, after seeing "planes all tooled for suicide attacks, I left there thinking we'd made that war end sooner." He adds, "Someday when I meet my maker, I'll know then if my one big thing was right.ST: I know. įollowing Thomas Ferebee's death, singer-songwriter Rod MacDonald wrote "The Man Who Dropped The Bomb On Hiroshima," a song directly quoting him from an interview MacDonald did for Newsweek's "Where Are They Now" feature in July 1970. He was survived by his wife, Mary Ann Ferebee, who donated his collection of military documents and objects to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. He died at his home in Windermere, Florida at the age of 81. Like Tibbets, Ferebee never expressed regret for his role in the bombing, saying "it was a job that had to be done." He then worked as a real estate agent in and around Orlando, Florida. Air Force in December 1970 at McCoy AFB, Florida as a master navigator (bombardier) with the rank of colonel. Ferebee spent most of his USAF career in the Strategic Air Command, serving during the Cold War and in Vietnam. Like Tibbets, Ferebee remained in the military in the years after World War II as the U.S. In the summer of 1944, he was recruited by Colonel Paul Tibbets to be part of the 509th Composite Group which was formed to drop the atomic bomb. After two years of flight school, Ferebee was assigned as a bombardier in the European theater, completing more than 60 bombing missions. A knee injury kept him from service in the infantry but he was accepted into flight training. After training for a small position with the Boston Red Sox and not making the team, he joined the Army. Talented in athletics since childhood, he earned awards in track, basketball, and football. In 1935, at age 17, he attended Lees-McRae College in Banner Elk, NC. Thomas Wilson Ferebee was born on a farm outside Mocksville, North Carolina, as the third of eleven children raised in a Methodist family.