The Target Committee (Kindle Single) Read Online Free Page B

and follow-up planes should maintain a minimum distance of 2.5 miles from the detonation point to avoid radioactive contamination. Monitoring of ground radiation in the vicinity would be necessary for some weeks, he said, after which the area should be “quite safe to enter.” 28
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    The Target Committee regrouped at the Pentagon on May 28 (Oppenheimer sent a representative). Two individuals critical to the success of the atomic mission addressed the committee. They were a pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, and a flight commander, Frederick Lincoln Ashworth. Both had had a long involvement in the nuclear mission and were fully apprised of every secret associated with the Manhattan Project. And both were, crucially, extremely good at their jobs.
    Tibbets
     
    Tibbets had been selected to fly the plane that would deliver the first atomic bomb. Theyoungest man in the room, Tibbets carried himself with a maturity beyond his 30 years. He seemed unperturbed at being among the very few who knew the true purpose of the mission – or perhaps he simply did not feel as other men do? No plane had dropped an atomic bomb; none had flown out of a radioactive cloud. Yet he was calm and cool, as if this were an everyday task he had been given to do.
    Tibbets’ technical skill and proven courage had drawn the attention of the top brass at the US Army’s Strategic Air Service. A veteran of dozens of combat missions over Europe and North Africa, he was among the most experienced B-29 test pilots and one of the finest bomber pilots in the US Air Force. He was exceptionally brave, too: Tibbets had flown the lead plane in the Americans’ first daylight heavy bomber mission over occupied Europe on August 17, 1942, and again in the first American raid of more than 100 bombers on October 9 that year.
    General “Hap” Arnold had hand-picked Tibbets for the project in the summer of 1944. The young man was appointed to command the 509th Composite Group, a unit within the US Army Air Forces specially selected to carry out the top-secret mission. Tibbets’ candor had startled his examiners during his security clearance tests. Asked whether he had ever been arrested, Tibbets admitted he had, ten years earlier, for having sex in the back seat of a car on Florida Beach. 29
    Tibbets actually enjoyed life at Wendover Field, the loathed air base on the Utah–Nevada border, which Bob Hope, on a brief visit, called “Leftover Field.” The isolation, the rigid command structure, the thoroughly scheduled days, all appealed to this ascetic officer. Orders, methods and results – the stuff of carefully planned action – sustained him. He described his mission to his superiors with the brevity of one for whom words, unless in the service of his appointed task, were a waste of time. His mission was, he said, “to wage atomic war.” 30
    Tibbets had unlimited security clearance. The young colonel needed only to say the code word “silverplate” and he got what he wanted – for example, the power to raise several squadrons, known as Tibbets’ Private Air Force. The personnel chosen for 509th Composite Group were taken from the 393d Heavy Bombardment Squadron, chosen for its high reputation. Special agents scrutinized every man and reported the slightest security breach to Tibbets, who learned the details of each member’s drinking habits, sex life, family and political orientation. Those who failed were packed off to remote air bases – in North Alaska, for example, where they could talk to “any polar bear or walrus” willing to listen, Tibbets later wrote. 31
    Those who met Tibbets’ exacting standards formed the kernel of the 509th. Three men convicted of manslaughter and several former criminals who had falsified their names to enlist were among the successful candidates. Tibbets offered to return their conviction files – with matches to burn them – if the mission succeeded. He valued their air skills over their moral rectitude.
    The group