![the enola gay crew the enola gay crew](https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/images/slideshows/SI-2003-18753_0.jpg)
When he was eight, his family moved to Hialeah, Florida, to escape from harsh midwestern winters. When he was five years old the family moved to Davenport, Iowa, and then to Iowa's capital, Des Moines, where he was raised, and where his father became a confections wholesaler. was born in Quincy, Illinois, on 23 February 1915, the son of Paul Warfield Tibbets Sr. 7.1 Distinguished Service Cross citation.After leaving the Air Force in 1966, he worked for Executive Jet Aviation, serving on the founding board and as its president from 1976 until his retirement in 1987. He commanded the 308th Bombardment Wing and 6th Air Division in the late 1950s, and was military attaché in India from 1964 to 1966. After the war, he participated in the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946, and was involved in the development of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet in the early 1950s. In September 1944, he was appointed the commander of the 509th Composite Group, which would conduct the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tibbets returned to the United States in February 1943 to help with the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. After flying 43 combat missions, he became the assistant for bomber operations on the staff of the Twelfth Air Force. Tibbets was chosen to fly Major General Mark W. He flew the lead plane in the first American daylight heavy bomber mission against Occupied Europe on 17 August 1942, and the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe on 9 October 1942. In July 1942, the 97th became the first heavy bombardment group to be deployed as part of the Eighth Air Force, and Tibbets became deputy group commander. In February 1942, he became the commanding officer of the 340th Bombardment Squadron of the 97th Bombardment Group, which was equipped with the Boeing B-17. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he flew anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic. Tibbets enlisted in the United States Army in 1937 and qualified as a pilot in 1938. He is best known as the aircraft captain who flew the B-29 Superfortress known as the Enola Gay (named after his mother) when it dropped a Little Boy, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. (23 February 1915 – 1 November 2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and NagasakiĬharter Pilot and President of Executive Jet Aviation."I didn't even find out that he was on that mission until I was 10 years old and read some old news clippings in my grandmother's attic," Tom VanKirk said Tuesday. Like many World War II veterans, he didn't talk much about his service until much later in his life when he spoke to school groups, a son, Tom, said. Then he went to school, earned degrees in chemical engineering and signed on with DuPont, where he stayed until he retired in 1985. He stayed on with the military for a year after the war. VanKirk told the Associated Press in 2005. "I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run," Mr. Six days after the Nagasaki bombing, Japan surrendered. That blast and its aftermath claimed 80,000 lives. Three days after Hiroshima, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The blast and its aftereffects killed 140,000 in Hiroshima. The bombing hastened the end of World War II. VanKirk flew as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. Theodore "Dutch" VanKirk, 93, the last surviving member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Monday at his retirement home in Stone Mountain, Ga.