LIMITED-EDITION SIGNATURE SERIES

****  Signed by Pilot/Aircraft Commander Paul Tibbets!

***** Very Rare! Few Left!

Historical Info:     

Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. (February 23, 1915 – November 1, 2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force, best known for being the pilot of the Enola Gay (named for his mother), the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in the history of warfare. The bomb, code-named Little Boy, was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Tibbets enlisted in the 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 commanding officer of the 340th Bombardment Squadron, 97th Bombardment Group, equipped with the Boeing B-17 bomber. 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 bomber for the first American daylight heavy bomber mission against Occupied Europe on August 17, 1942, and the first American raid of more than 100 bombers in Europe on October 9, 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 bomber. In September 1944, he was appointed commander of the 509th Composite Group, which would conduct the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, he participated in Operation Crossroads, and was involved in the development of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber. After his retirement from the Air Force, he worked for Executive Jet Aviation, serving as its president from 1976 until his retirement in 1987.

The Enola Gay is the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb, code-named "Little Boy", to be used in war, by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the attack on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945, just before the end of World War II. Because of the bomber's role in the atomic bombings of Japan, its name has been synonymous with the controversy over the bombings themselves. The B-29 was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Paul Tibbets. The Enola Gay gained additional national attention in 1995 when the cockpit and nose section of the aircraft was exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution in downtown Washington, D.C. The exhibit was changed due to a controversy over original historical script displayed with the aircraft. In 2003, the entire restored B-29 Enola Gay went on display at NASM's new Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

Info: B-29 Super Fortress Paul Tibbets Enola Gay signed on the wing, Comes with Certificate of Authenticity