Opaque Lucidity

First, Maybe Last

Paul Tibbets has died. Tibbets, then a Colonel in the Army Air Corps, was the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb to be used in combat (the first bomb built was tested in the New Mexico desert). Tibbets never doubted his actions; he was acutely aware of the costs of an invasion of the Japanese home islands. He was 92. Another of the greats among the greatest is gone.