Enola Gay, heroism or insanity?

tyrodtom said:

No matter how well armed you were, it's not going to make any difference when 2 car loads of Gestapo agents come to get you at 3am. Even armed people have to sleep.

Before and during WW2 a German refugee stayed in my home, my older sister Leyetta is named after her. She left to go back to Germany in the early 50s. Since I was born in 1947, I barely remember her.
But the congregation I attended as a kid also sponsored two German families who decided they no longer wished to remain in Germany after WW2, from these people being close I was learning about Germany's decent into the nightmare of the 3rd Reich before I was even in school.

When I was in Germany in the middle 70s, I visited some of the families of these people still in Germany.

My impression has come to be that Germany had underwent such chaos in the late 20s and early 30s, that anyone who brought a little stability and JOBS was going to get a free hand to do whatever else they wanted. By the time the German population realized what that whatever else entailed, it was too late to them personally to do anything about it. Having a Mauser, or Lugar wouldn't make any difference.

Thousands of Germans did protest and resist in their own way, if you'll just take the time to look at the long list of people beheaded during the 3rd Reich, you might be surprised at what you could lose your head for during that time. And your surviving family would receive a bill for the execution expenses.

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GregP said:

You're telling me stuff I already know above. I was not thinking in any way of pre-1942 Germany; I was thinking much more along the lines of very late 1941 and onwards. Since I live in the U.S.A., I tend to think of WWII in terms of 1942 - 1945 since that is the extent of our active involvement. We didn't declared war until Peral Harbor though we did supply machines, arms, food, and clothing, etc. before that time.

Adler do your relatives have any different experiences with that after 1941? If not, then my sources must have experienced other than your family did. I suppose that's not unlikey in the least given the fact that a war was on. Even so, if they did not experience difference after 1941, then maybe the disarming I was told about was very localized, but the people who told me were Germans from Germany. I didn't exactly make up what they said ... I don't do that. 2 of the 3 were from around the Austrian border. I don't know where the third one was from. She was the young woman who was a Luftwaffe aircraft spotter when the war ended. She had some very interesting stories of wartime Germany. Her husband met her while he was guarding her just after the war and confirmed some of them separately while we shot billiards.

While you may perceive it differently, I also owned an 8 mm Mauser along with many other weapons. I gave the Mauser to a good friend who still hunts with it. It has an original German scope on it. I still retain a good selection of other guns including a VERY clean WWI 6.5 x 55 Mauser whose bore looks brand new. I am anti-crime but not in any way anti-gun.

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pbehn said:

The reason why I originally asked if Colonel Tibbets regretted naming his aircraft after his mother is that even in 2015 any discussion with the name "Enola Gay" flies off on a tangent frequently discussing the holocaust. What does the bombing of Hiroshima have to do with Nazi Germany restrictions (real or imagined) on Jews

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DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

I have no clue. Good question!

Almost every thread strays off topic from time to time. It almost always finds its way back though.

For the sake of historical accuracy though, I will not let even sidetracked conversations that are false go unanswered.

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pbehn said:

I have no problem with that at all, its just sad that a loving mothers name who did her best for her son, a formidable and talented pilot serving his country as his country wanted, asked and required him to do, gets dragged into discussions of the darkest side of humanity. The Enola Gay and Mrs Tibbets had nothing to do with Nazi history and politics.

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GregP said:

I don;t know either, It was one paragraph out of 8, and had little to do with anything but war in general, and somehow blossomed from there.

I see no one has said anything about the other 7 paragraphs in my poost, which were exactly on topic. That seems to happen a lot in here, too. In that one apparently errant paragraph, I said I knew three Germans who had made that claim and the rest sort grew from spotaneous fertilizer. I still know them and they still said they experienced what they experienced.

Maybe the other seven paragraphs are suitably on subject.

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GrauGeist said:

One thing I have always found interesting, is that Tibbets and Enola Gay always seem to be at the forefront of the Atomic Bombings, but if you mention Bockscar or Maj. Sweeny, people draw a blank.

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GregP said:

You know Tom, I didn't SAY anything incorrect. I repeated what someone who grew up in Nazi Germany told me face-to-face not once, but several times. Apparently it wasn't that way for everybody and I can accept that. But it was also just as apprently that way for my friends.

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drgondog said:

90% of my disagreements with you are a direct result of stating as 'facts', a conversation or multiple conversations of what you 'heard' versus what You Know by education, research knowledge. All to often you insert "What I believe, or want to believe" - then declare it as fact.

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GrauGeist said:

Agreed, Joe!

Enola Gay's mission went off without a hitch and interestingly enough, one of the two B-29s that accompanied Tibbets on the mission was later named "Nessecary Evil" (44-86291).

Sweeny's mission was a cluster from the word go, though: a fuel transfer pump failed, bad weather at the rendezvous, missed meeting one of the instrument B-29s, smoke and clouds obscuring primary target Kokura, Japanese AA and fighter defenses alerted, Nagasaki partially obscured by clouds making a difficult aiming solution and then the landing fiasco as you mentioned.

* I almost forgot to mention that one of Mom's co-workers had been on the second mission and had personal photos he took during that mission (which was a major no-no) and among them was a photo showing Japanese fighters ascending for an intercept far below. I always wondered why the fighters didn't continue to press the attack, but it occurs to me that they may have been destroyed in the detonation due to thier much lower elevation at the time.

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