I believe that we are going to have to maintain a certain strength in nuclear weapons no matter what the case may be. In other words, they believe that it is possible to go ahead and not have all of these things to worry about wars and nuclear weapons and so on. There is a large segment of our population who I think believe in fairy tales. I perceive that attitude to have changed on the part of the public at large. You don’t fight a war to hold, or you don’t fight one to lose. Tibbets: Taking historical lessons from World War I and actual experience with World War II, my idea is, and I think I am joined in this belief by all kinds of people whether they are military or not, if you are going to fight a war, you fight it to win. What would you have done in those circumstances? Would you have gone ahead and bombed Hanoi, if need be, and brought this all to an end? Many people have raised the question over whether or not we did that correctly. Ryan: Since World War II, General, we have fought skirmishes in Vietnam and in Korea. I think it definitely is because it affected the whole world. Ryan: General, do you think that might be the most significant military mission that has ever occurred in the history of mankind, when you stop and think of the magnitude and the whole new era it ushered in? Tibbets: It has been because I think there would have been a war before this if we had not had those weapons, and if we did not have them today. Ryan: You do not think, then, that the mere presence of the nuclear capability, the nuclear bomb, has been a deterrent to war? On the other hand, a major conflict with the use of nuclear weapons is something that I can see in the future. Whether we will be able to survive without brushfires, I doubt.
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The answer is I can see that as a possibility, because it now appears to me that most historians, and most military analysts, are saying that the dropping of that bomb changed the nature of human conflict forever. Some have said it will never occur again. Ryan: Now, so many people seem to have it, or have the ability to produce that bomb. It brought peace to the world at that time. The thing is it did what it was supposed to do. I have to say we cannot look at the so-called grimmer aspects of it because there is no morality in warfare, so I do not dwell on the moral issue. Because a military man starts out his career with the idea of serving his country and preserving the integrity of that country. And over the years, I have gotten numerous letters from foreign nationals, as well as Americans, who had been ready to make an invasion with the same basic statement: what you did probably saved my life. I think in the intervening years, that I have arrived at the same conclusion because by ending the war, we would save lives. I just couldn’t see how any nation could stand up to the power of the atom as portrayed to me at that particular time. Paul Tibbets: My conception was at that time, if this thing is successful, we will bring this war to a close. I was just wondering, looking back now, have your perspectives on the event itself, on warfare, changed at all?
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Ryan: General, it has been more than four decades since that event. The age of atomic warfare began and the nature of human conflict was changed forever. Ryan: Three days later, a second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki. Beneath that was hidden the ruins of the city of Hiroshima. The site that greeted our eyes was quite beyond what we had expected, because we saw this cloud of boiling dust and debris below us with this tremendous mushroom on top. So we turned around to take a look at it. After we felt the explosion hit the airplane, that is the concussion waves, we knew that the bomb had exploded, and everything was a success.
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Paul Tibbets: Well, as the bomb left the airplane, we took over manual control, made an extremely steep turn to try and put as much distance between ourselves and the explosion as possible. In an instant, over four square miles of the city and an estimated 90,000 of its inhabitants ceased to exist. A single atomic bomb dropped from the Enola Gay exploded over Hiroshima, Japan. Six hours later, they changed the course of history. Tom Ryan: In the early morning of August 6, 1945, three B-29 bombers departed from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean.