The Final Storm (56 page)

“No … not necessary. Please proceed with the mission.” Tibbets focused on the restart of the two silent engines, heard a final word from Blanchard. “Please?”

The two engines restarted, belching smoke for a brief second, their props fully engaged. Tibbets pushed the throttles forward, the plane surging, climbing again, straight and level. After a long silence, Tibbets spoke into the intercom.

“Navigator, give me a time to target.”

“Twenty-one minutes, sir.”

“Roger, twenty-one minutes. Colonel Blanchard, please note your watch.”

Blanchard didn’t respond, but Tibbets knew the colonel would do exactly that. He leaned back, pressed himself into the seat, flexed his shoulders. Immediately behind him the gap was too small for a regular seat, and he knew that Blanchard’s jump seat was far more uncomfortable. On Tibbets’s order the crew had made a minimal effort to soften the man’s ride by adding cushions to the meager padding. He felt Blanchard shifting around, a bump against Tibbets’s shoulder. The thought came again.
Asshole
.

T
he meeting with Blanchard’s boss, Curtis LeMay, had been on Guam, hours after Tibbets had learned that the test explosion at Alamogordo had been successful. Tibbets had expected to be there for the test, to see for himself just what this new weapon was supposed to do, but there had been an urgency about his return to Tinian, a sudden change of plans that infuriated Tibbets, and made Tibbets’s own commander more nervous than either of them needed right now. Tibbets’s superior was Major General Leslie Groves, the man who had headed up the Manhattan Project since its inception in 1942, and the one man who had more authority over the mission to drop the atomic bomb than anyone but the president. It was Groves who had transmitted the coded message to Tibbets, already back on Tinian, that the bomb’s test had been an extraordinary
success. Tibbets had enormous respect for Groves, especially for the man’s hard-nosed resemblance to a bulldozer. The military chiefs respected Groves as well, appreciating that Groves was a problem solver, and a man who would pursue any project, no matter how complicated, to its conclusion. Though it had not been Groves’s decision to name the pilot who would carry the atomic bomb over Japan, Groves had welcomed Tibbets immediately, quick to understand what many in the air forces already knew. Paul Tibbets was most likely the best man for the job. To the relief of both men, they had quickly forged a working relationship that rested on a firm foundation of mutual respect. Tibbets had not always agreed with the way Groves wanted things done, but even those arguments were never severe. Tibbets especially respected that if Groves saw he was wrong, he would listen to that and make corrections. Groves certainly had an ego, but he had been trained primarily as an engineer, with an engineer’s mind. If the problem required a new solution, and that solution could be explained in ways an engineer’s mind would appreciate, changes would be made. It had never hurt their relationship that Groves’s office was in Washington, while Tibbets managed the intense training of the 509th in far-distant bases. The 509th had been established in the late fall of 1944, with its first base at Wendover, Utah. Security had been astoundingly tight, with a small army of highly screened guards, both in uniform and plain clothes, who kept a tight watch over the base and the men of the 509th, a tighter watch than most of them even knew about. But Tibbets knew that a host of unexpected security problems could plague any base located on American soil. With the enormous airstrips now fully operational on the island of Tinian, in the Mariana Islands chain, a few miles from Saipan, Tibbets had pushed hard for the 509th to relocate that much closer to their eventual target. Groves had not objected. The security of a base so far removed from prying eyes was only one reason Tibbets appreciated the move. He knew what many other commanders knew, that there was one enormous advantage being in the Pacific. You were no more than a teletype message or a radio relay from your superiors, but you didn’t necessarily have to endure them looking over your shoulder.

The exception to that was Curtis LeMay, whose headquarters on Guam kept him too close for Tibbets to avoid. LeMay had known nothing of the Manhattan Project until a few weeks before Tibbets and the 509th had arrived on Tinian in early July, and even now LeMay knew very little of the specifics of just how this bomb was supposed to work. LeMay was
far more concerned that a
very special
mission was to take place beneath the umbrella of his command, and he most definitely wanted to be included. That inclusion carried a heavy price for Tibbets. LeMay had begun to make loud noises that any special mission from Tinian should be flown by a flight crew selected by LeMay himself. With a nagging crisis possible from LeMay’s increasing growls, Tibbets had been forced to fly to Guam himself, and had suffered through an explosion of a different kind, facing the caustic general by keeping a demeanor of calm that impressed even Tibbets himself. No matter what kind of demands or tirades LeMay might pour over him, Tibbets knew that he always had the upper hand. A single call to Groves, or better yet, to Groves’s superior, the air corps chief Hap Arnold, would immediately produce the desired order for LeMay to leave his hands completely off of Tibbets and his mission. But orders or not, that kind of antagonism would never sit well with a bulldog like LeMay, and Tibbets knew that with so much at stake, it would be unwise to make an enemy out of Curtis LeMay. Tibbets had his hands full just keeping his own men segregated from anyone else on Tinian while he monitored their training and the ongoing secrecy of their mission, no simple task. None of the other wing commanders who flew missions out of the huge airfields had any idea what the 509th was doing there, and why they were not participating in the usual bombing runs over Japanese targets. Since the 509th’s mission could not be revealed in any detail to anyone on Tinian, there was considerable hostility from the other bomber groups that these new guys were receiving some kind of cushy special treatment. And, of course, the rumors flew along with the B-29s. To many it seemed as though Colonel Paul Tibbets was being given plush special treatment for no better reason than that he had powerful friends in Washington.

It seemed to matter little to LeMay that Tibbets had once been the most sought-after pilot in Europe, had been the primary pilot for Generals Eisenhower and Mark Clark, and had scored more than forty successful bombing missions in the workhorse B-17. LeMay had his doubts that a pilot with no experience in the Pacific had any business commanding this kind of critically important mission over a target area he had never seen. LeMay knew that Tibbets had received a very definite order that he was never to engage in any kind of practice run over any part of Japan. Should something go wrong, from anti-aircraft fire or mechanical failure, Tibbets’s capture by the Japanese could become a security disaster that might jeopardize the entire project. Tibbets took no insult from that. He had no interest
in finding out just how much torture he could take from a sadistic Japanese officer, or whether his moral backbone could withstand the worst kind of interrogation the Japanese might inflict on him.

Even LeMay knew that Tibbets’s orders came directly from Washington, and LeMay was sharp enough not to make enemies in places where his own career path might be decided. After the rage had passed, LeMay had reluctantly agreed that Paul Tibbets might be the right man after all, though LeMay had one
request
. For at least one training mission, LeMay wanted Colonel Butch Blanchard, his operations officer, to go along for the ride, just to see if these boys who had done most of their work over Utah knew anything about what it took to handle a B-29 in the Pacific.

T
he voice came through the intercom from his navigator.

“Target dead ahead, sir.”

“I see it, Captain.”

Tibbets leaned back, made a slight glance at Blanchard, said into his intercom, “Note the time, if you will, Colonel. Unfortunately, my navigator has miscalculated. We’re ahead of schedule by four seconds.”

Blanchard said nothing, the message very clear. Tibbets looked to the altimeter, the plane straight and level at thirty thousand feet. He spoke into the intercom again.

“Major Ferebee, it’s your bird.”

The bombardier responded, “Got her, sir.”

Tibbets pulled his hands back from the controls, scanned the skies to the front for any sign of Japanese anti-aircraft fire. The island of Rota was still in enemy hands, though no one, including the Japanese, seemed to give that much thought. The island was less than a hundred miles to the south of Tinian and for now made the perfect target for test bombing runs. Today, they carried a single five-hundred-pound bomb, and other than giving the B-29’s crew one more opportunity to test their skills, Tibbets had designed this flight to serve only one purpose: a demonstration of the prowess of the men Tibbets already knew to be the best he had ever flown with. Impressing Colonel Blanchard would be fun.

“Ten seconds to target, sir.”

“Roger.”

“Bomb away.”

Ferebee’s voice was calm, none of the raucous cheerleading, no excitement
from any of the others. Ferebee had been with Tibbets from his earliest days in the B-17s, as had his navigator, Captain Dutch Van Kirk. Both men knew exactly what this particular flight was about, and so far there hadn’t been a single hitch.

With the bomb’s release, Tibbets’s hands moved quickly back to the controls, and in one jerking motion he pulled the plane into a steep banking move. It was a maneuver he had practiced a dozen or more times, knew already that the turn would reach an angle of 155 degrees, the best angle the plane could withstand to carry its crew as quickly as possible away from the bomb’s eventual target. It was not a challenge any of them had faced before, but when the moment came, and the enormous power of the atomic bomb was unleashed over a Japanese target, no one, not the physicists, the military officers, not Tibbets himself, had any idea what would happen to the plane that dropped it. This one part of their training had appealed to Tibbets with perfect logic. Turn the plane as sharply as possible and get the hell out of there.

Tibbets had braced himself for the violence of the turn, knew the rest of the crew had done the same. Behind him, the one man who did not expect the maneuver squawked into the intercom, “What the hell? What’s happening? We’re stalling!”

Tibbets held hard to the controls, felt the tail of the plane sag, the natural reaction to such a tight turn. He suddenly had no patience for his passenger, said in a clipped shout, “We have to stall the tail. Only way to do the turn at this angle. You tell me if there’s another way I should be doing it.”

“Okay! Enough!”

“Not yet, Colonel.”

Tibbets pulled back on the controls, the plane suddenly veering upward, nearly vertical, the engines straining, the nose skyward, the plane slowing, seeming to bounce softly on its tail. The plane stopped flying now, the perfect stall, nearly motionless, but now the violence returned, the nose suddenly swinging over to one side, the plane in a momentary free fall. The ocean below was in full view now, the plane in a steep dive, and Tibbets focused on the altimeter, heard a gurgling sound through the intercom, a chattering voice, “You’re going to kill us!”

“Not today, Colonel.”

He pulled back slowly on the wheel, the plane’s nose rising, his stomach settling hard, the smoothness returning, the wings straight and level.

“Navigator, what’s the heading to base?”

“Zero two zero, sir.”

“Zero two zero, roger.”

He could already see Tinian, could see the shape of the island, so much like New York City,
Manhattan
, and he wondered, did Groves know that? No, too much irony there.

“Tinian tower, Dimples Eight Two. Request permission to land.”

“Dimples Eight Two, clear to land Runway Able. Winds eleven knots at zero eight zero.”

“Roger, Tinian Tower. Dimples Eight Two out.”

He nosed the plane toward the runway’s western end, the B-29 responding with perfect precision now. He glanced over to Lewis, thought of letting him handle the landing, thought, no, let’s keep this by the damn book. This jackass behind me’s probably puked on his shoes, and he’ll still be looking for something to bitch about.

The plane settled low, hovered slightly, then dropped the last few feet, touching down with a squeaking jerk. Tibbets pulled the throttles back farther, touched the plane’s brakes, said, “Time, Colonel Blanchard?”

There was a silent moment, and Blanchard responded now.

“Yes, we’re exactly fifteen seconds late. I’ve seen what I needed to see, Colonel.”

Tibbets smiled, said nothing. The instructions came from the tower, but he knew the configurations of the taxiway, moved the plane that way, to the special security area, away from the other squadrons. He applied the brakes, the plane rolling to a stop, the engines shutting down completely. He sat for a moment, the roar of the engines still in his ears, fading to a soft hiss. Blanchard was up already, moving out from behind him, and Tibbets saw a smile on his co-pilot’s face, heard Blanchard’s voice.

“Thank you for the demonstration, Colonel Tibbets. It will be my recommendation to General LeMay that you and your crew proceed with your mission as ordered.” He paused. “You proved your damn point.”

H
EADQUARTERS,
509
TH
C
OMPOSITE
G
ROUP
, T
INIAN
J
ULY
26, 1945

He sat on the small porch of his quarters, the smoke from the pipe rolling up around him, carried off now by a warm breeze. The sun was sinking rapidly, and beside him the chaplain sipped from a china cup, the coffee
Tibbets knew was strong enough to melt tin. After a silent moment, the chaplain said, “How can you drink this stuff?”

“Iron stomach. Comes from training in a B-29. Never had any sweat in a B-17, like flying in your mama’s lap. I’ve gotten all kinds of heartburn from these bigger birds. Some engineer took a few shortcuts, I guess. War Department probably got in a hurry, said, just build the thing, let the pilots worry about keeping them in the air.”