Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets Jr., who led the B-29 Enola Gay on its mission to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, is the grandson of Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets IV.
According to The Wichita Eagle, the repaired B-29 bomber Doc—one of only two flying B-29s in the world—flew to Whiteman Air Force Base (AFB) for the Wings Over Whiteman Airshow on June 9, 2017, with Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets IV at the controls.
Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets Jr., who led the B-29 Enola Gay on its mission to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945, is the grandfather of Tibbets IV. Tibbets IV is a B-2 stealth bomber pilot and the commander of the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman.
The first nuclear weapon ever deployed in combat, the Mk I bomb (also known as “Little Boy”), was delivered by the B-29 Enola Gay, which is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. On August 6, 1945, the bomb exploded above Hiroshima at a height of 1,800 feet. “Little Boy” was a gun-like weapon that was the outcome of the Manhattan Project, which started in June 1942. It detonated by discharging one mass of uranium down a cylinder into another mass to produce a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It produced an explosive force equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT while only weighing roughly 9,000 pounds.
Photo by Erin McClellan [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons