Pilot of Hiroshima bomber dies

The pilot of the plane that ushered in the age of atomic warfare with the first nuclear attack on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, died Thursday at the age of 92, a spokesman said.
Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr., whose B-29 bomber dubbed the Enola Gay dropped the 9,000-pound "Little Boy" bomb on August 6, 1945, died at his home in the midwest city of Columbus, Ohio.

He had been suffering from heart problems, manager and publisher Gerry Newhouse told AFP.
Tibbets was more than just the pilot. He was instrumental in redesigning and testing the plane used to carry the massive bomb and organizing and training the men needed to deliver it.
Tibbets never regretted the bombing that led to the end of World War II but at a horrific price: 140,000 dead immediately and 80,000 other Japanese succumbing in the aftermath, according to Hiroshima officials.

"That's what it took to end the war," he told the Columbus Dispatch in 2003. "I went out to stop the killing all over."

Aware that not everyone agrees with his view of history, Tibbets asked his family to cremate him so his grave site would not be desecrated by detractors, Newhouse said. [AFP]