6, 1945, the Enola Gay lifted off from the island of Tinian carrying a uranium atomic bomb assembled under extraordinary secrecy in the vast endeavor known as the Manhattan Project. Newhouse said Tibbets had requested that there be no funeral or headstone, fearing it would give his detractors a place to protest.
His death was announced by a friend, Gerry Newhouse, who said Tibbets had been in decline with a variety of ailments.
Brigadier General Paul Tibbets Jr., the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II, died Thursday at his home in Columbus, Ohio.
