Mort d'un pilote

[vince-16]

Il s'appelait Paul Tibbets..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/ap_ ... it_tibbets

[vince-16]

en français mais avec moins d'infos

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/afp/20071101/t ... b55_2.html

[OO-JSR]

have a good flight sir

[Nick Asbestos]

C'est pas n'importe quel pilote. C'est celui qui a piloté un certain B-29 (nommé Enola Gay) un certain 6 Aout 1945.
Condoléances

[*Aquila*]

Très grand bonhomme. N'importe qui peut opérer un largage de charge. Mais n'importe qui n'aurait pas su assumer celui-là 62 ans durant.
Have a good flight sir.

PS: pas de polémique SVP.

[Soto]

Salut les hommes, avant toute chose je vais m'exprimer en mon nom :

Bye Bye Paul, have a nice last fly

Ensuite et au nom de toute l'équipe de modération :

Pas la peine de polémiquer sur l'action passée de Paul Tibbets sans quoi ce post sera cloturé sans autre forme de procès ni avertissement.
Edit : grilled by Aquilla

[LFabriceBZ]

Une question: qu'est devenu l'équipage de "Enola Gay" juste après leur fameuse mission?

Quarantaine juste après l'attéro?
Décorations?
Suicides pour certains peut-être?
Leurs carrières a-t-elle changer en bien ou en mal?

[warbird2000]

Décorations?

Pour cette question je peut te répondre

selon ciel de guerre

quand l'avion a aterri,

Le général Spaatz a remit la Distinguished Service Cross à Tibbets
Chaque homme de la mission reçoit la Silver Star

Quarantaine juste après l'attéro?

non puisque le général remet les décorations devant l'avion et ils ont ensuite descendu quelques bouteilles. Il sont cependant tenus au secret

[warbird2000]

Pas la peine de polémiquer sur l'action passée de Paul Tibbets sans quoi ce post sera cloturé sans autre forme de procès ni avertissement.

De toute manière , ce n'est pas lui qui a pris la décision de larguer la bombe.
Il n'a fait que son devoir de soldat.

Ma mémoire me joue peut être des tours mais je crois que le général le May ( commandant des de la force de b-29 responsable en autres du raid sur Tokyo )
avait déclaré que si il les américains auraient perdu la guerre, il aurait été jugé comme criminel de guerre.

[Scrat]

De toute manière , ce n'est pas lui qui a pris la décision de larguer la bombe.
Il n'a fait que son devoir de soldat.

Ma mémoire me joue peut être des tours mais je crois que le général le May ( commandant des de la force de b-29 responsable en autres du raid sur Tokyo )
avait déclaré que si il les américains auraient perdu la guerre, il aurait été jugé comme criminel de guerre.

J'aime pas trop reprendre les gens sur l'orthographe et la conjugaison, mais là quand même...

[Soto]

Certes l'homme dont nous parlons n'était pas seul dans cette galère ... mais là n'était pas le but de ce post.

[warbird2000]

Pardon , mais je ne suis pas le seul a faire la faute , il me semble

http://blabladuneblonde.canalblog.com/a ... 76359.html

On ne peut pas employer le conditionnel dans ce cas ?

[Milos]

Tout dépend de la tournure de la phrase :

- les Américains auraient perdu la guerre, il aurait été jugé etc ...
- si les Américains avaient perdu la guerre, il aurait été jugé etc ...

Voilà voilà

[warbird2000]

Tout dépend de la tournure de la phrase :

- les Américains auraient perdu la guerre, il aurait été jugé etc ...
- si les Américains avaient perdu la guerre, il aurait été jugé etc ...

Voilà voilà

Je comprend mieux,
Comme il y'a déja un si, il n"est pas nécessaire d"insister au niveau du verbe

[Knell]

on recentre ?

[InaZuma]

Merci El Knell parce que ces grands moments de "Bernard Pivotade" partent toujours en sucette à un moment ou à un autre.

@+

Zuma

[warbird2000]

Etant à l'origine du dérapage, je recentre

Tibbets a fini sa carrière comme brigadier général. Le bombardement ne l'a en tout cas pas rendu fou ou été néfaste à sa carrière

http://www.theenolagay.com/

[Warlordimi]

Dire qu'il assume, je sais pas. Il a été choisi ou il s'est porté volontaire pour cette mission?

Par ailleurs, d'un point de vue opérationnel, je me souviens qu'ils étaient 3 B29 pour ce vol, mais seuls, sans escorte? Pas un peu dangereux malgré la fin de la défense nippone? Avaient-ils un bombardement prévu comme leurre?

[PiF]

[quote="Warlordimi"]Dire qu'il assume, je sais pas. Il a &#233]

En fait les Japonais gardaient leurs forces au sol en attendant les vagues de dizaines de bombardier, pensant que comme d'habitude, l'USAF ne feraient de bombardements que via des raids massifs, ce ne fut pas le cas ici.

Un premier avion météo est allé faire une reconnaissance au-dessus de la ville, les sirènes ont retentit, en pensant que c'était un prémice à un raid massif, croyant que c'était une fausse alerte, les gens sont allés au travail comme d'habitude, puis une 2ème alarte fut déclenchée indiquant l'arrivée de 3 bombardiers au dessus de la ville, les gens ignorèrent c'est avertissement pensant que c'était encore des avions qui faisaient de la reconnaissance.

[warbird2000]

[quote="Warlordimi"]Dire qu'il assume, je sais pas. Il a &#233]

En fait des missions dites spéciales avaient eut lieu pour habituer les japonais à la présence d'un petit nombre de b-29 dans les environs.

Le jour de la mission, aucune escorte n'était prévue


Les avions étaient en fait au nombre de sept

Enolay gay: le lanceur
The great Artist : avion transportant des instruments de mesure
n 91 : transporte des scientifiques
Top secret: Avion de rechange au cas ou Enolay aurait eut des problèmes mécaniques.

Straight Flush : Avion Meteo sur hiroshima
Jabbitt III: avion méteo sur kokura ( 2 cible )
Full House: avion meteo sur nagasaki , cible de rechange

Il faut savoir aussi que les b-29 évoluaient à 9300 mètres, altitude que peu d'avions japonais pouvaient atteindre aisement sachant de plus que ces b-29 étaient débarassés de tout leur armement défensif , armement de queue excepté

[JV69_Kartoffe]

Très grand bonhomme. N'importe qui peut opérer un largage de charge. Mais n'importe qui n'aurait pas su assumer celui-là 62 ans durant.
Have a good flight sir.

PS: pas de polémique SVP.

Ils en étaient bien conscients, mais ceux qui ont du assumer à mon sens c'est plutot les dirigeants.

De plus pendant la guerre, les ordres sont les ordres, et a moins d'ordonner de commettre un acte illégal ou une trahison, leur devoir est de les exécuter.

Voici ce qu'en a dit Truman.

Reçu bien plus tard à la Maison Blanche, Truman lui dira : « Ne perdez pas le sommeil parce que vous avez planifié et rempli cette mission. C'était ma décision. Vous n'aviez pas le choix ».
Promu général de brigade en 1959, Tibbets a quitté l'armée en 1966.

[SpruceGoose]

...Il a été choisi ou il s'est porté volontaire pour cette mission?

Il ne faut pas être naïf au point de croire que pour une mission de telle importance, n'importe quel volontaire aurait été choisi !
Il faut un professionnel compétent ayant un leadership incontesté.

Penchez-vous sur cet extrait pour avoir ne serait-ce qu'une vague idée...

...
This was the grand design, but there was an even grander plan in the making, one which only a few people knew about. It started with a capital "A" and the key word was Atom.
On the first day of September in 1944 as I packed my bags and pointed my B-29 toward Colorado Springs, I had no idea that fate had laid her unpredictable hand on me for an important rôle in a supersecret program designed to bring a swift end to the war. My flight to Colorado was in response to an urgent telephone call the day before from General Uzal G. Ent, commander of the Second Air Force. I knew it was urgent because he told me to pack my bags, since I would not be returning to Alamogordo. There was something cryptic in the way he spoke of my new job, which, he confided in answer to my question, would eventually take me overseas.
Overseas? I was sure this meant the Pacific because of my work with the B-29.
Arriving at Colorado Springs, I reported to General Ent's office shortly before the appointed hour of 10 o'clock. I was not prepared for the reception that awaited me.In an outer office, I was met by an officer wearing the insignia of the Army Corps of Engineers, which puzzled me even though I had learned long ago that the unexpected is quite normal in time of war. After introducing himself as Lt. Col. Jack Lansdale, he ushered me into a small side room and said, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions before we go in to see General Ent."
Without explaining his purpose, he began talking about my personal history, my record as an officer and, before that, my civilian life.
His "couple of questions" stretched into an interrogation from which I soon discovered that he knew more about me than I could remember about myself. I began to suspect that the new assignment which General Ent had mentioned on the phone was considerably more important than I had imagined.
Some of the questions were highly personal. I was surprised that the Air Corps had gone to the trouble to learn so much about my past. Suddenly I realized the meaning of a phone call I had received two weeks before from my father in Miami.
"Are you in some kind of trouble, son?" he asked.
"Not that I know of," I replied. "What makes you think so?"
"Well," he said, hesitating, "I hear some investigators—I think they were from the FBI—have been down here asking questions about you."
Dad had been tipped off by a couple of family friends who had been questioned. I passed off the matter as a routine check. Now, in the presence of Jack Lansdale, I knew it had something to do with my new assignment.
The penetrating nature of Lansdale's questions baffled me but, however embarrassing, I knew that tough questions called for honest answers. I made my replies as straightforward as I could, even though some of the incidents he mentioned had all but escaped my memory.
One question related to some critical comments I had made to friends in Cincinnati, after my return from overseas, regarding certain aspects of military strategy in Europe. Part of what I said had been distorted and I had no trouble setting the record straight.
His last question startled me.
"Have you ever been arrested?" he asked.
I had never forgotten the traumatic experience when, as a college student of 19, I was interrupted by a nosy policeman with a flashlight during a love-making episode while parked in a secluded spot on the beach at Surfside, Florida. Since it was obvious that my questioner knew about this, I promptly acknowledged the incident, which was the nearest I ever came to acquiring a criminal record.
Lansdale now rose from his chair and indicated that our conversation was over. It had been informai and reasonably pleasant.
"Now let's go see General Ent," he said, leading the way into the commander's office where, to my surprise, two other people were waiting. One was in the uniform of a Navy captain and the other was a civilian. Behind the general's desk were the customary emblems of his office: an American flag on a staff on one side and the banner of his Second Air Force command on the other.
By now I was completely puzzled. There had been the brief but pointed questioning. Now a reception committee, Obviously, I was to become involved in something very sensitive from a security standpoint.
How sensitive I could never have imagined! Before that morning was over, I was transported into a strange new world in which the most incredible miracles of science replaced all the realities of my military experience.After making me welcome, General Ent introduced the others. The naval officer was Captain William Parsons and the civilian was Dr. Norman Ramsey, a Columbia University professor. My inter-rogator, Colonel Lansdale, was then identified as a security officer for the Manhattan District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"I'm well satisfied with Colonel Tibbets," Lansdale said to General Ent.
"That's good," said Ent, who had known me and my record. "I felt sure you would be."
The general then explained that I had been chosen for a task that was both important and highly secret. Before supplying the details, he impressed me with the need to conceal the nature of my work from everyone, including my family and—this just about floored me—even the people I would be working with.
I would be expected to organize a combat force of my own to deliver a new-type explosive so powerful that its full potential was still unknown. In fact, General Ent said, it hadn't yet been devised, but such progress was being made that success seemed quite certain.After this preliminary and intentionally vague explanation, he turned to Professor Ramsey and said, "Now you take over and explain the whole thing to Paul."
It turned out that the professer was involved in our meeting because of his ability to simplify a complex scientific subject. Before the war he had been a successful classroom teacher of physics. Some science professors are born for research, others for teaching. Ramsey was a happy combination of both.He started out by asking me, "Did you ever hear of atomic energy?"
I remembered enough from my college science courses to answer that I understood the subject in a general but nontechnical way. I had also read newspaper predictions, a few years before, that the atom might some day be harnessed as an energy source.

Professer Ramsey went into a brief explanation of what had happened in the field of atomic science during the past few years. He explained that the United States had become secretly commit-ted to a crash program to develop a bomb, using the principle of atomic fission, that would have an explosive power equal to that of several thousand tons of TNT. He touched upon things that were going on at laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and at factories in Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
General Ent picked up the conversation at this point and explained my role in the atomic warfare that the United States was preparing to introduce sometime next year to an unsuspecting world. Development of the weapon had reached a point, he said, where the problem of delivering it on target now needed urgent attention. It was one thing to build an atomic bomb of incredible destructive power. It was quite another to drop it safely. What would be the explosion's effect on the bomb-carrying plane and its crew? There would be tremendous shock waves, as well as the new phenomenon known as radiation. Ours was not a nation with a kamikaze mentality. When our bombers took off, the odds had to favor their safe return by at least ten to one.
The discussion that morning touched on a number of details, although it was explained that I would have broad authority to work out technical problems as they developed. One B-29 had already been made available to the Manhattan Project, as the atomic enterprise was known, and some experimental flying had been done, but there had been no agreement on delîvery technique. That would be left to an experienced combat pilot, which is where I came into the picture.Even though the first bomb might not be ready for almost a year, my task was given high priority. I would have the airplanes—15 B-29s—and the support personnel, numberiing approximately 1,800 men. The organization was to be completely self-contained with its own engineering, maintenance, and technical units, ordnance squadron, troop transport aircraft, military police, and a medical unit with specialists in the field of radiology.
There had been nothing like it in this or any other war. Some were to call it "Tibbets's Individual Air Force" because I was given the authority to requisition anything needed to carry out my assignment.
We would operate under the name of the 509th Composite Group, a designation that would confuse other military people and arouse their unconcealed curiosity in the months to come. If I ran into trouble, such as a refusal to make available some needed service or equipment, I was authorized to break the impasse by use of a code word, "Silverplate," which would be recognized even by those who had no knowledge of the project with which it was associated.
My job, in brief, was to wage atomic war. It didn't matter that I was not a scientist and had very little understanding of the strange world of neutrons, protons, electrons, and gamma rays. In the months ahead, I was to learn somewhat more than the average layman about uranium, plutonium, and chain reaction, because I would be in regular contact with scientists who were working with those terms on a daily basis. I had to be told of the explosive power of the weapon that was being developed, and the dangers inherent in the device, including such hazards as radioactivity.
The question that worried General Ent and others, and which now became my problem, was how to drop a bomb of such magnitude without risking damage to or destruction of the airplane that made the delivery.
What made the matter so difficult was the fact that there was no precise agreement among the scientists on the size of the explosion they proposed to set off. There were formulas which indicated that, if it were 100 percent efficient, the resulting explosion might crack the earth's crust. It was assumed, however, that such efficiency could not be attained. Then there was the matter of radiation. What about the fallout from the atomic cloud?
In our discussion in General Ent's office, it was quickly agreed that conventional methods of bombing a target would not work. In order to escape destruction, the bombing plane would have to put as much distance as possible between itself and the point of the blast.
"What do you consider a safe distance?" I asked.
Captain Parsons, a balding Naval Academy graduate who was an associate director of the Los Alamos bomb laboratory in charge of atomic bomb ballistics, undertook to answer.
"We're not sure," he confessed, "but our best calculations
indicate that an airplane should be able to withstand the shock waves at a distance of 8 miles."
Gloser than that, he implied, the bomber might suffer structural damage or even be thrown out of control.
This brought up another question. "How much will the bomb weigh?" I asked.
Although it was still to be built, Parsons said it was expected to weigh in the neighborhood of 9,000 or 10,000 pounds. This was approximately the same as the bomb load carried by B-29s on a typical mission.
With some effort, a plane carrying such a load with enough fuel to return to its base could attain an altitude of 30,000 feet over the target, or a little less than 6 miles above the ground. It would be my job to find a way to increase the distance between blast and bomber to 8 miles.Our conversation touched briefly on other matters pertaining to the project. For one thing, Parsons said, the bomb bays of the B-29s assigned to my command would have to be modified to accommo-date the pumpkinlike shape of the bomb that was being developed. I would be given the responsibility of selecting a training site for my atomic air fleet. It would have to be in an isolated location—the farther from civilization the better—in order to maintain all possible secrecy. The matter of security would be another of my re-sponsibilities.General Ent said I would have a choice from among three bases that were available: Wendover, Utah: Great Bend, Kansas: and Mountain Home at Boise, Idaho.
Although I was to have broad authority to recruit the most competent personnel available in the air force, the general had already taken steps to provide me with the nucleus of my special air force. He mentioned that there were three B-29 squadrons of the 504th Group in training at Harvard, Nebraska.
"These squadrons are combat-ready," he said, and suggested that I visit Harvard at once and check them out. He had already earmarked the 393rd bomb squadron there for detachment from their parent wing, subject to my approval.
I soon got the idea that my new job would be a back-breaker. There was more that could go wrong than right. Although it represented an honor, it carried such a burden of responsibility that I viewed the assignment with mixed feelings. I was about to acquire an exciting headache. Fortunately, the excitement of the next 10 months made the headache endurable.
I have been asked how I happened to be chosen to organize and command this important operation. I'm not sure, but from what I’ve been told, and from what has been written about the enterprise, I have reached some conclusions.
First, it was obvious that the commander must have had considerable combat experience. I qualified on this score. Having been involved from the start of the air battle against Hitler-held Europe, I had demonstrated the ability of leadership.
A second requirement was familiarity with the airplane that was to be used for the mission, the new B-29. Here I was probably the most qualified pilot available, since I had been involved in the testing of this aircraft for almost a year, working out the inevitable bugs and making recommendations that developed it into the best heavy bomber ever built.
Add to this the fact that I had gained a reputation as an independent type of operator. In the European theater, I was called on to do things for which no formula or standards had been established. Maybe I had simply "lucked out," but whether it was luck or good sense, I had written the book, so to speak, on many of the bombing techniques that were now being applied successfully in the air war against the enemy.I had been given the responsibility of launching daylight bombing raids when our British allies, with their prior experience in this war, had told us they would be suicidal. The tactics I devised and carried out in those early days of air war against the Germans continued to be the pattern with which U.S. bomber squadrons were destroying Hitler's ability to make war.
If this seems an immodest self-appraisal, let me pass along the opinions of others. One book on the subject of the atomic attacks on Japan mentioned my "calm efficiency" and described me as "one of America's finest bomber pilots. Another said I "gave a reassuring impression of stability and reliability."
Although I did not know it at the time of the interview in
General Ent's headquarters, I learned later that I was one of three candidates given serious consideration for the task of organizing the atomic bomber fleet.At 29, I was the youngest of the three, one of whom was a brigadier general and the other a full colonel. I was a lieutenant colonel and did not win my eagles until January 1945.
The brigadier was Frank Armstrong, a competent officer whom I had served in England in 1942. At the time of our first encounter at Polebrook, he had not flown a B-17. Consequently, he gave me full responsibility for planning the bombing missions over Europe. General Ent was aware of this and had no trouble recommending me over Armstrong when our names came up for consideration.The other candidate was Colonel Roscoe "Bim" Wilson, who was later to attain three-star rank and is now retired. Colonel Wilson was already involved in the secret project as General H. H. "Hap" Arnold's personal representative to the Manhattan District. After my appointment, he was responsible for making sure that I was given all the men and materiel necessary to carry out my mission.
In view of the Norstad incident at Algiers, and the fact that that officer had inserted derogatory information about me in my record file, it may seem strange that I was chosen over such senior officers as General Armstrong and Colonel Wilson. If Arnold and Ent were aware of the incident, and for sure they were, it is likely that they recognized it for what it was: a display of pettishness by an ambitious officer. At this time, Norstad held the rank of brigadier general and was chief of staff of the 20th Air Force (rear)—that is, in Washington, D. C., not out in the islands where the going was rough. It was to be more than four months before he learned of the atomic project.
In the busy days to corne, I was given details of our atomic undertaking. The so-called Manhattan Project, in charge of produc-ing the bomb, was under the command of Major General Leslie R. Groves, an engineering officer of bulldozing efficiency. From his office in the Pentagon, he managed a complex program that was carried on in complete secrecy not only from the enemy but from the American public, even though it involved the expenditure of two billion dollars and the employment of more than a hundred thousand workers and scientists in factories and laboratories scattered around the country. Incredibly, most of the factory workers were not aware of what their labors would produce.
The largest concentration of scientists, including a number of Nobel Prize winners, was at a secret laboratory on a mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico, not far from Santa Fe. Their director was a brilliant nuclear physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who came to the project from the University of California at Berkeley.
Inspiration for the program came from a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt in 1939, describing the
possibility of developing an "extremely powerful" bomb. A study was authorized, but the decision to devote full energy to the production of the bomb was not made until December 6, 1941— coincidentally, the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The most important milestone in the bomb's development came on December 2, 1942, when the first controlled chain reaction was achieved in a pile of uranium and graphite on a squash court beneath the stands of old Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.
As Captain Parsons briefed me that day in General Ent's office, he explained that the scientists were confident of success, but the first bomb would not be ready until the following summer. Where it would be used depended on the war situation at that time. My job was to organize and train a bombing force.
We would be organized for the purpose of dropping a bomb that hadn't been built on a target that hadn't been chosen.Although I came out of General Ent's office flattered by the importance of my new assignment, it wasn't until the next day that I became fully conscious of the terrible responsibility that was now mine.
...
At the age of 29, I had been entrusted with the successful delivery of the most frightful weapon ever devised, one that had been developed at a cost of two billion dollars in a program that involved the nation's best scientific brains and the secret mobiliza-tion of its industrial capacity.
Even as this all began to sink in, it never occurred to me that I might not succeed. Although the weapon was beyond my comprehension, there was nothing about flying an airplane that I did not understand. If this bomb could be carried in an airplane, I could do the job.
In the next few months, I discovered that I had a great deal to learn. There would be no room for error. Then there was the matter of secrecy that I would have to enforce.
My first job was to find a home for the outfit that I still had to organize. Of the three bases General Ent had ordered me, I flew first to Wendover in northwestern Utah on the Nevada border.
As I approached Wendover from the air, I liked what I saw. It was remote in the truest sense. Except for the nearby village of Wendover, with a population of a little more than 100, ...

[vince-16]

merci Spruce, vraiment très interessant cet extrait du témoignage de Tibbets :-)

quelle est la source?

[SpruceGoose]

... quelle est la source?

Son livre : Flight of the Enola Gay

L'ouvrage relate sa vie de pilote, son implication dans la mission sur Hiroshima et l'après guerre.
Un bon livre dans la catégorie car riche en évènements.

(Mon impression sur l'homme : un leader né doté d'une tête bien vissée sur les épaules)

[Tomcat]

Passionnant... je vais tâcher de me trouver le bouquin !
Effectivement c'était pas le premier pilote venu...