Paul Tibbits dies

cjt156

Another point is that the dropping of those bombs gave the rest of the last century a refence point. With the nuclear arms race in full flow, had Hiroshima and Nagasaki not happened, would nuclear weapons have been deployed in Korea, Vietnam, the Cuban missile crisis, the middle-east?

Obviously what happened in 1945 was horrific. Perhaps, though, it saved a recurrence on a larger scale.

Pompey Magnus

The argument goes that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more lives than would otherwise have been lost had an invasion taken place, but I wonder if America would have dropped the bomb on Berlin if it had been developed a few years earlier, and then justified this as acceptable because of all the lives it would ultimately have saved?

That said, Japan struck first so I don't think they have too much to complain about.

Pherekydes

event wrote: »

Slow coach, dunno where you entered but when i put paul tibbits into google i got this

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&q=paul+tibbits&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

shows there who he is

That's the very search I did. It's just that you're looking at the wrong link. The first mention of Paul Tibbits is 5 or 6 down. The rest are about Paul Tibbets, the A-bomb man.

Tony Danza

ruskin wrote: »

Isnt it just wrong that that monster lived a long healthy life after what he took part in?

I'd imagine he was a patriot, not a monster.

hopalong85

Tony Danza wrote: »

I'd imagine he was a patriot, not a monster.

lol, ridiculous thing to say, just unbelievably ridiculous.

gavrilo princip

Bodhidharma wrote: »

I Blame this guy for ALL of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip

Most evil bastard ever, started off a sequence of events we're still feeling today.





(only joking. Princip, like Tibbits, was only a pawn in a much bigger game. Governments make the decisions)

I only intended to take out Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand.

I didn't know I would start the biggest war the world had ever seen.

Terry

Orange69 wrote: »

This thread is teh ghey!

If you have nothing decent to add to a thread, then don't post in it.

Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma wrote: »

I Blame this guy for ALL of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip

Most evil bastard ever, started off a sequence of events we're still feeling today.





(only joking. Princip, like Tibbits, was only a pawn in a much bigger game. Governments make the decisions)

Same could be said of Leonard Cheshire one of the UK observers of the Nagasaki bomb, after the war he (and his wife Sue Ryder) devoted their lives to helping war victims.

Agamemnon

hopalong85 wrote: »

lol, ridiculous thing to say, just unbelievably ridiculous.

How?

Orange69

Terry wrote: »

If you have nothing decent to add to a thread, then don't post in it.

What, like these posts?

Mossy Monk wrote: »

Shut up.

SumGuy wrote: »

.

bizmark wrote: »

Asshole :rolleyes:

All pointless posts and instances of personal abuse, yet you pick mine out?

Well done.

TheThing!

ruskin wrote: »

Paul Tibbits, the man who dropped the first a-bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, has died at the age of 92. Isnt it just wrong that that monster lived a long healthy life after what he took part in? He dropped a bomb that completly disintegrated human life, and caused countless cancers and suffering for years to come

I hope you are being sensational in order to get a response and I suspect that you are, but if you aren't you are an extremely poor excuse for a human being, the kind the world would be better off without. Do you think it would have made the slightest difference if Paul Tibbits had said, no, I object to dropping this bomb on moral terms? It wouldn't have done a thing, they had a list of men who could and would have done the job. Paul Tibbets was heroic because he was strong enough to step up and do what had to be done. And anyway, he saved more lives than he took and caused less suffering than he prevented. You need to have a long think buddy.

hopalong85

agamemnon wrote: »

How?

He was in the military. He carried out orders. I'm pretty sure that he won't go down in history as a 'patriot' though.

If it's true that he gave a little reconstruction of the event at some airshow in Texas years afterwards then i would have to say in my personal opinion he was a monster. That's just plain disrespectful to the thousands upon thousands of innocent people that suffered as a result of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

hopalong85

TheThing! wrote: »

? Paul Tibbets was heroic because he was strong enough to step up and do what had to be done. And anyway, he saved more lives than he took and caused less suffering than he prevented. You need to have a long think buddy.

Why do people keep saying this? It did not "have to be done".

Agamemnon

hopalong85 wrote: »

He was in the military. He carried out orders. I'm pretty sure that he won't go down in history as a 'patriot' though.

Yes, he was in the military, fighting for his country against another country that attacked his first. Sounds patriotic to me.

TheThing!

hopalong85 wrote: »

Why do people keep saying this? It did not "have to be done".

What are talking about? It had to be done because his superiors told him to do it. That is the only part of the process that he had an input on. The decision to drop the bomb was made long before he accepted his job and was nothing to do with him.

leninbenjamin

leninbenjamin wrote: »

were they? i read somewhere recently that they were already going to surrender by the time the bombs dropped.

Don't know if that's true or not. but Japan only surrendered on the condition that the Emperer was not charged with war crimes etc and remained as the figurehead of the Japanese state.

Had that condition not been met Japan would have continued to fight!, maybe the bombs were a "persuader" to ensure a rapid decision.

Unlike Germany who surrendered unconditionally.

MOH

In fairness, if you're going to start off a rant against somebody, get his name right.

Slow coach is right, it was Paul Tibbets who allegedly* dropped the bomb.

The only references on the web for Paul Tibbits are some doctor in the DoD.



*Everyone knows he was a patsy, it was really teh lizards

hopalong85

agamemnon wrote: »

Yes, he was in the military, fighting for his country against another country that attacked his first. Sounds patriotic to me.

Oh right. So if some dude hits you and you decide to shoot them then that's cool because they attacked you first? We're talking about dropping an atomic bomb and killing innocent civilians here ffs. There's nothing honourable in that.

hopalong85

TheThing! wrote: »

What are talking about? It had to be done because his superiors told him to do it. That is the only part of the process that he had an input on. The decision to drop the bomb was made long before he accepted his job and was nothing to do with him.

Oh sorry. I misread what you said, i thought you meant the bomb had to be dropped.

Manic Moran

hopalong85 wrote: »

We're talking about dropping an atomic bomb and killing innocent civilians here ffs. There's nothing honourable in that.

By the standards of the time, it was just the way things were done. Doubtless you do things without a second thought today which will, in sixty years time, be considered barbaric and immoral.

NTM

Seriously though, who's decision was it ultimately to drop the bomb? They should have the blame more than the pilot. It's like saying a bullet is to be blamed for killing someone, and not the person that pulled the trigger.

astrofool

hopalong85 wrote: »

Oh right. So if some dude hits you and you decide to shoot them then that's cool because they attacked you first? We're talking about dropping an atomic bomb and killing innocent civilians here ffs. There's nothing honourable in that.

Regardless of anything, you should at least know what the word patriot means before arguing about it. Hell, Hitler was patriotic. (godwinned )

It's also easy to look back at something in hindsight and decide that it was bad, and then forget all the horrific things that occurred up to that point to make it happen.

Agamemnon

hopalong85 wrote: »

Oh right. So if some dude hits you and you decide to shoot them then that's cool because they attacked you first? We're talking about dropping an atomic bomb and killing innocent civilians here ffs. There's nothing honourable in that.

When one country is attacked by another, it's legitimate for that country to fight back. Your analogy about "some dude" hitting you is way off the mark. Many more innocent Japanese civilians would have been killed in an invasion and the whole country would have been devastated, not just two cities.

The Japanese have no grounds for complaint about civilian casualties either; read up on what they did to China, to name just one country they ravaged. Dropping the atomic bombs is not something that should be celebrated but it was the lesser of two evils.

SimpleSam06

This was the situation at the end of world war 2.

In Europe, the Russians and the US were practically eyeball to eyeball, and they made for uneasy bedfellows. There was no guarantee that either side was going to stop at Berlin.

In the Far East, the Japanese knew they were beaten. Talk of men, women and children fighting to defend their country was nonsense. The myth of the invincible Empire was long shattered, and most of the population were war weary and ready to capitulate. The problem was, to who?

The Japanese were contemplating surrender to the Russians as well, a conditional surrender that would have left most of the old regime in place (ie allowed those responsible for the war to continue in power). This would have left the US with no foothold in Asia besides the Philippines, and no barrier between themselves and the newly emergent Communist powers. Also they could not allow any shred of the old regime to survive, a complete dismantling of the Japanese government was the only way they would accept surrender.

While it is true that the invasion of Japan would have been a bloody, drawn out affair, the main reason for the use of the atomic bomb was to force an unconditional surrender to allied forces, and to make sure the Russians didn't get ideas about the red flag flying from Cornwall to Tokyo.

So while it was without a doubt an evil act, it prevented far more bloodshed and destruction than it caused.

The pilot and crew of the bomber are almost entirely blameless in this matter. You might as well blame the trigger of a gun for firing.

One of the main reasons Japan has done so well in the interim was because of the staggering amount of financial investment pumped into the country by the US for decades afterwards.

Edit: Oh yes, and the reason they dropped two was to make everyone else think they had many more, and could produce even more quickly, which was far from the truth.

The Bollox

Bodhidharma wrote: »

I Blame this guy for ALL of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavrilo_Princip

Most evil bastard ever, started off a sequence of events we're still feeling today.

holy carp! it's Don Corleone. he made Franz an offer he could refuse it seems

anyway back on topic: there is no right or wrong way to look at Tibbet's actions. like so many posters have already said, he was just a man given a job and had he refused he would not have been given any praise or shown any affection from the people besmirching his name here today. what he did was very noble, as he had to live the next 60 years of his life haunted by the screams of 100,000 people when the bomb went off. had it not gone off the war would have probably gone on for another few years with the casualty count 5 fold of that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Mr.Micro

Manic Moran wrote: »

By the standards of the time, it was just the way things were done. Doubtless you do things without a second thought today which will, in sixty years time, be considered barbaric and immoral.

NTM

dropping the first nuclear bomb was hardly standard . Regardless of pros and cons such as saving lives in the long term .think of the suffering then and for years after that the survivors had with radiation sickness and cancers etc . I hope he felt it was worth it .

Mr.Micro

Mr.Micro wrote: »

.think of the suffering then and for years after that the survivors had with radiation sickness and cancers etc . I hope he felt it was worth it .

Radiation sickness was (allegedly) unknown before the bombs were dropped!

Terry

agamemnon wrote: »

When one country is attacked by another, it's legitimate for that country to fight back. Your analogy about "some dude" hitting you is way off the mark. Many more innocent Japanese civilians would have been killed in an invasion and the whole country would have been devastated, not just two cities.

The Japanese have no grounds for complaint about civilian casualties either; read up on what they did to China, to name just one country they ravaged. Dropping the atomic bombs is not something that should be celebrated but it was the lesser of two evils.

Indeed.

Damn Iraqi insurgents.

Bodhidharma

gavrilo princip wrote: »

I only intended to take out Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand.

I didn't know I would start the biggest war the world had ever seen.

Yeah right Princip , get in the corner and stay there until you admit to what you did.

robinph

Terry wrote: »

Damn Iraqi insurgents.

It's all that Princip fellows fault as well, him and teh lizards.