6, 1945, the Enola Gay took off for a 13-hour flight to Japan with the first nuclear weapon ever deployed. Paul Tibbets, served with Ferebee in the European campaign, handpicked him for his crew and called him “the best bombardier who ever looked through the eyepiece of a Norden bomb site.” bombing raid on Nazi-occupied France in 1942 and was the lead bombardier for the Allies’ first 100-plane daylight raid in Europe. In addition to the Hiroshima attack, Ferebee was along on the first U.S.
He was 81.Ī career Air Force officer who retired as a colonel in 1970, Ferebee participated in a number of historic bombing runs during the war, first in North Africa, then in Europe and finally the Pacific.
Thomas Wilson Ferebee, the bombardier in the crew of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in World War II, died Thursday in Windermere, Fla.
