JosM-i Dante Parra Herrera can be reached at or 30. Admission is $7 for adults children 5-12, $4 and children younger than 5, free. Tibbets will speak again today at the Weeks Air Museum, 14710 SW 128th St., at 1 p.m. He figures such an invasion would have cost the United States more than 268,000 casualties, without counting the Japanese. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday at his home in Columbus, Ohio after suffering a number of health problems. Roberts compared the costs of the battle of Iwo Jima, where American forces had about 48,000 casualties, 35 percent of the force, to an invasion of Japan itself, for which close to 800,000 American troops would have been necessary. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. He contends that the alternative to the A-bomb - an invasion of Japan - would have been far costlier in lives to both Americans and Japanese. The Enola Gay ( / nol /) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. Air Force photograph The B-29 (also called Superfortress) was a four-engine heavy bomber that was built by Boeing. The Enola Gay was 10 miles away when the blast. Tibbets, Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Roberts, who was an intelligence analyst for the Pentagon during the war. pilot's seat of Enola Gay moments before takeoff on WWII air raid mission to drop 1st atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Tibbets Jr., the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29. Ever since, Tibbets has been speaking to audiences.Īmong those on Tibbets' side is Chalmers M. Tibbets Jr., Pilot of Enola Gay, Dies at 92 Give this article By Richard Goldstein Nov. Gerry Newhouse, who manages Tibbets' appearances, said that is when Tibbets decided he had to go out and set the record straight.