The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [197]
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