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.

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.

After the war he received wide publicity, including motion picture portrayals, and became a symbolic figure in the debate over the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

[2][3] In the late 1920s, business issues forced Tibbets's family to return to Alton, Illinois, where he graduated from Western Military Academy in 1933.

[4] During that time, Tibbets took private flying lessons at Miami's Opa-locka Airport with Rusty Heard, who later became a captain at Eastern Airlines.

[5] On 25 February 1937, he enlisted in the army at Fort Thomas, Kentucky, and was sent to Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas, for primary and basic flight instruction.

[2] After graduation, Tibbets was assigned to the 16th Observation Squadron, which was based at Lawson Field, Georgia, with a flight supporting the Infantry School at nearby Fort Benning.

[7] The younger son, Gene Wingate Tibbets, was born in 1944, and was at the time of his death in 2012 residing in Georgiana in Butler County in southern Alabama.

[8][9] While Tibbets was stationed at Fort Benning, he was promoted to first lieutenant[10] and served as a personal pilot for Brigadier General George S. Patton, Jr., in 1940 and 1941.

[12] Tibbets remained on temporary duty with the 3d Bombardment Group, forming an anti-submarine patrol at Pope Army Airfield, North Carolina, with 21 B-18 Bolo medium bombers.

[16] It had been hastily assembled to meet demands for an early deployment, and arrived without any training in the basics of high altitude daylight bombing.

[20] On 9 October 1942, Tibbets led the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe, attacking industrial targets in the French city of Lille.

Poor bombing accuracy resulted in numerous civilian casualties and less damage to the rail installations than hoped, but the mission was hailed an overall success because it reached its target against heavy and constant fighter attack.

[23]In the leadup to Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, the commander of the Eighth Air Force, Major General Carl Spaatz was ordered to provide his best two pilots for a secret mission.

[26] Tibbets had flown 25 combat missions against targets in France[14] when the 97th Bomb Group was transferred to North Africa as part of Major General Jimmy Doolittle's Twelfth Air Force.

[29] When General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, the Chief of United States Army Air Forces, requested an experienced bombardment pilot to help with the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, Doolittle recommended Tibbets.

At the time, the B-29 program was beset by a host of technical problems, and the chief test pilot, Edmund T. Allen, had been killed in a crash of the prototype aircraft.

[37] Tibbets was told that he would be in charge of the 509th Composite Group, a fully self-contained organization of about 1,800 men, which would have 15 B-29s and a high priority for all kinds of military stores.

[39] When the operation was still in its development stages, Armstrong and Colonel Roscoe C. Wilson were the leading candidates to command the group who was designated to drop the atomic bomb.

[42] During a meeting with these "sanitary engineers", Tibbets was told by Robert Oppenheimer that his aircraft might not survive the shock waves from an atomic bomb explosion.

[45] With the addition of the 1st Ordnance Squadron to its roster in March 1945, the 509th Composite Group had an authorized strength of 225 officers and 1,542 enlisted men, almost all of whom deployed to Tinian, an island in the northern Marianas within striking distance of Japan, in May and June 1945.

Furthermore, two representatives from Washington, D.C. were present on the island:[46] the deputy director of the Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, and Rear Admiral William R. Purnell of the Military Policy Committee.

[47] The ground support echelon of the 509th Composite Group received movement orders and moved by rail on 26 April 1945, to its port of embarkation at Seattle, Washington.

[50] Project Alberta's "Destination Team" also sent most of its members to Tinian to supervise the assembly, loading, and dropping of the bombs under the administrative title of 1st Technical Services Detachment, Miscellaneous War Department Group.

[53][54] Enola Gay, serial number 4486292, had been personally selected by him, on recommendation of a civilian production supervisor, while it was still on the assembly line at the Glenn L. Martin Company plant in Bellevue, Nebraska.

[62] Tibbets was a technical advisor to the 1946 Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, but he and his Enola Gay crew were not chosen to drop another atomic bomb.

After he graduated in June 1955, he became Director of War Plans at the Allied Air Forces in Central Europe Headquarters at Fontainebleau, France.

Flying the 1,500 miles of open water to the coast of Japan, he guided his plane over the island of Shikoku and the Inland Sea, threatened with the constant danger of anti-aircraft.

[85] Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb, a 1980 made-for-television movie, somewhat fictionalized, told the story of Tibbets crew.

[92] Tibbets figured largely in the 2000 book Duty: A Father, His Son and the Man Who Won the War by Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune.