Paul Tibbets is of course most famous for being the pilot of the Enola Gay which flew the first atomic mission against Hiroshima on August 6th. 1945. Tibbets enlisted in the United States Army in 1937 and qualified as a pilot in 1938. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he flew anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic. In February 1942, he became the commanding officer of the 340th Bombardment Squadron of the 97th Bombardment Group, which was equipped with the Boeing B-17. In July 1942, the 97th became the first heavy bombardment group to be deployed as part of the Eighth Air Force, and Tibbets became deputy group commander. He flew the lead plane in the first American daylight heavy bomber mission against Occupied Europe on 17 August 1942, and the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe on 9 October 1942. Tibbets was chosen to fly Major General Mark W. Clark and Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower to Gibraltar. After flying 43 combat missions, he became the assistant for bomber operations on the staff of the Twelfth Air Force.

Tibbets returned to the United States in February 1943 to help with the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. In September 1944, he was appointed the commander of the 509th Composite Group, which would conduct the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he participated in the Operation Crossroads nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946, and was involved in the development of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet in the early 1950s. He commanded the 308th Bombardment Wing and 6th Air Division in the late 1950s, and was military attaché in India from 1964 to 1966.

Thomas Wilson Ferebee joined the Army Air Corps in the Summer of 1941. After two years of
flight school he was assigned as a bombardier in the European theater, completing more
than 60 bombing missions. In the summer of 1944, he was recruited by Colonel Paul Tibbets to
be part of the 509th Composite Group which was formed to drop the atomic bomb. (Tibbets once stated that Ferebee was “the best bombardier who ever looked through the eyepiece of a Norden bombsight.”)

Like Tibbets, Ferebee remained in the military in the years after World War II as the U.S. Army
Air Forces became the U.S. Air Force. Ferebee spent most of his USAF career in the Strategic
Air Command, serving during the Cold War and in Vietnam. He retired from the U.S. Air Force
in December 1970 at McCoy AFB, Florida as a master navigator (bombardier) with the rank of
colonel.