The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [245]
GENERAL LESLIE GROVES
If physicist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer can accurately be called the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” Groves is its godfather. By sheer strength of will and a personality that few find appealing, Groves succeeds in maintaining a wall of secrecy around the Manhattan Project that seems inconceivable in today’s world.
At the war’s end, he continues to lead what is still labeled the Manhattan District, which in 1947 evolves into the Atomic Energy Commission. Groves is awarded the Legion of Merit and promoted to lieutenant general (three stars) in 1948. Knowing he has consistently made enemies in Washington by the unyielding fierceness of his personality, which some describe as disgustingly rude, he realizes he can climb no farther up Washington’s military ladder, and later in 1948, he retires. He moves to Darien, Connecticut, and goes to work as an executive for the Sperry Rand Corporation, until he retires again in 1961. He pens a memoir of the Manhattan Project in 1962 and returns to Washington. He lives out a peaceful retirement there and dies suddenly from a heart attack in 1970, at age seventy-three. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM “DEAK” PARSONS
Immediately after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, Parsons is promoted to commodore. For his actions he is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and a Silver Star. In 1948 Parsons is promoted to rear admiral, and later serves as a member of the fledgling Atomic Energy Commission, but remains in the navy, and, appropriately, serves as assistant chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. He dies suddenly of a heart attack in 1953, at age fifty-two, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
COLONEL PAUL TIBBETS
Returning from the bombing run over Hiroshima, Tibbets finds himself the center of massive public attention, a position with which he is never comfortable. Immediately after the official surrender of Japan, Tibbets is granted permission to visit Tokyo, and learns that, while the airfields near Hiroshima are unusable, it is possible to fly into Nagasaki. Accompanied by two longtime friends, his navigator, Dutch Van Kirk, and his bombardier, Tom Ferebee, Tibbets logically enough keeps his anonymity among the Japanese, and learns to his surprise that the citizenry in Nagasaki is doing what citizens are doing throughout the rest of Japan (and Germany). They are making every effort to return to something of a normal life, even with the virtual destruction of their city. Tibbets comes away from the visit with respect for the civilians, writes, “I felt no animosity, neither did I have a personal feeling of guilt about the terror we had visited upon their land. It was unfortunate of course that these people had been obliged to pay such a price for a war into which their country had been led by a handful of ambitious and ruthless politicians and militarists.”
With the war’s end, Tibbets is still in service to Curtis LeMay, and LeMay orders him to leave Tinian and report to Washington, D.C. Along the way, Tibbets visits Roswell, New Mexico, where he offers a final farewell to many of those who had served the 509th as air and ground crews, most of whom are scheduled to be discharged from the postwar air force.
Expecting to return to something of a normal family life, Tibbets is dismayed to find that he is greatly in demand by newspaper and radio reporters. For the first year after the war’s end, there is little controversy surrounding the dropping of the bomb, most of the attention focused instead on the practical peaceful applications of atomic energy, a topic Tibbets is woefully unqualified to address.
In 1948 Tibbets recognizes the coming of the jet age, and attends Air Command and Staff School to familiarize himself with the new technology. He soon becomes a staunch advocate of the new B-47 bomber, a six-engine jet that enters service in 1951, and he serves as a test pilot for the aircraft, which quickly becomes a primary tool for the increasing needs of the Cold War. As LeMay