The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [215]
In studying the aerial photos of Hiroshima, Tibbets and his bombardier, Tom Ferebee, had noticed a peculiar landmark at the city center, a T-shaped bridge that would be clearly visible at even the highest altitudes. For a bombardier, it was a perfect AP: Aiming Point. As long as the skies were relatively clear, everyone involved in the decision agreed that Hiroshima was the primary target, and now Tom Ferebee, the man who would guide the plane into position for their sole opportunity for a successful strike, knew exactly what to look for.
The strike plane for the mission had come from the Martin assembly plant in Omaha, Nebraska. It was a natural decision, based on the problems of airworthiness of so many of the heavily used B-29s, that the primary aircraft chosen for this unique mission would be brand-new, well tested, and would be handpicked by the man who would fly her. Tibbets had gone to Omaha himself, touring the assembly plant, learning more about the nuts-and-bolts construction of the planes than he had ever thought possible. Once his choice had been made, Tibbets had left the job of ferrying the new plane to his co-pilot, Captain Bob Lewis. While Tibbets continued with his various jaunts between Los Alamos, Utah, and Washington, Lewis had piloted the new plane to its training bases, first to Wendover, then on to Tinian. With a myriad of details to occupy every moment of his day, Tibbets had not paid any attention to rumblings from Lewis that Lewis actually expected to fly the primary mission himself. Tibbets was, after all, the man in charge, in command of several crews, all of whom had a specific part of the mission. From plotting the routes of weather observers to putting rescue planes in position, Tibbets had embraced every part of the operation. This planted the notion in Lewis’s mind that Tibbets would remain on Tinian as the chief administrator, while Lewis, who had flown the specially equipped B-29 on many practice runs, would actually drop the atomic bomb. It was only when the plane had been given a name, with no input from Lewis, that the controversy had come to a head. For Tibbets it was one more piece of the aggravation trying to keep the cap on the psyches of men who had endured an astonishing amount of stress, training for a mission whose details they did not fully understand. Tibbets set Lewis straight. Bob Lewis would co-pilot the plane, with Tibbets in the pilot’s seat.
Throughout the training, the strike plane had undergone modifications that most pilots who flew the big bombers would have found strange, if not completely unnerving. Tibbets himself had observed that a plane without machine guns maneuvered with far more dexterity and could actually reach an altitude nearly four thousand feet higher than a typically armed bomber. The strike plane thus would carry only a pair of fifty calibers in its tail. In addition, there was a panel of electronic switches and gauges installed in proximity to the bomb bay itself, separate from the usual radio and navigational panels. The strange configuration included heavy electrical cables that fed from the panel directly down into the bomb bay. Two dozen wires would feed from these heavy cables and be attached directly to the casing of the bomb itself. There was only one man who understood the importance of the wires and the panel that would monitor them: Deak Parsons.
On the outside of the plane, Tibbets had put into motion the handiwork of the bomber group’s chief artist, the man charged with adding the distinctive decorations to each one of the planes. Until now, the strike plane was simply known as Number Eighty-two. But Tibbets knew that every plane in the group carried its primary pilot’s distinctive mark, some piece of the man himself, his personality, his background. Tibbets