History: Thomas Ferebee, dropped A-bomb on Hiroshima

["Mike Grissom" <mpg1@coastside.net>]

radsafe'rs,

The following was in the 3/17/00 San Jose Mercury
News:


----------
Thomas Ferebee, dropped
A-bomb on Hiroshima

Windermere, Florida [USA] (AP) - Thomas Wilson
Ferebee, the bombardier who dropped the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II, died
Thursday. He was 81.

Mr. Ferebee was 26 on August 6, 1945, and already
a major and a veteran of 64 missions when the B-29
Enola Gay took off for Japan with the first nuclear
weapon ever deployed.

Mr. Ferebee, who retired from the Air Force as a
colonel in 1970, said he never felt guilty but was
sorry the bomb killed so many people.

"I'm sorry an awful lot of people died from that
bomb, and I hate to think that something like that
had to happen to end the war," he said in a 1995
interview on the 50th anniversary of the bombing.

"Now we should look back and remember what
just one bomb did, or two bombs," he said. "Then
I think we should realize that this can't happen again."

America's bombing of Hiroshima and the blast
at Nagasaki three days later left more than 100,000
dead and led to the end of the war.

The Enola Gay's pilot, retired Brigadier General
Paul Tibbets, had hand-picked Ferebee for his
crew and called him "the best bombardier who
ever looked through the eyepiece of a Norden bomb
sight."

----------

S.,

MikeG.

Michael P. Grissom
Email:  mpg1@coastside.net


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