super
my last flight
Tibbets was born to Paul and Enola Gay Tibbets on February 23, 1915, in Quincy, Illinois, and spent most of his childhood in Miami, Florida. He was drawn to flying at an early age, never forgetting a summer day at the local racetrack. A stunt pilot let a 12-year-old Tibbets climb aboard his small plane and toss Baby Ruth candy bars to the crowd below, according to The New York Times.
Tibbets later attended a private military preparatory school in Illinois and began taking flying lessons, despite his father’s wish for him to pursue a medical career. His mother, though, encouraged her son to follow his dream.
“He [my father] said, ‘You’re going to be a doctor,’ and I just nodded my head and that was it. And I started out that way. But about a year before, I was able to get into an airplane, fly it—I soloed—and I knew then that I had to go fly airplanes,” Tibbets said, according to a 2002 interview in The Guardian.