This was reported almost immediately after Tibbets and the Enola Gay crew completed their mission.Ī native of Van Alstyne, Texas, about 40 miles from Dallas, Eatherly was a “fine pilot,” according to Tibbets, whom Huie interviewed at the Pentagon in 1962.
That distinction belonged to Colonel Paul Tibbets, commander of the Enola Gay, a specially modified B-29 Superfortress that was in the sky over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. The core fact is that Eatherly, then 26 years old, was not the pilot who dropped the atomic bomb. Huie was given access to Eatherly’s medical (including psychiatric reports) and military records, FBI files, and court transcripts, and Eatherly’s former wife, two brothers and several former B-29 crew members cooperated extensively in Huie’s research.
The author thought it would take about six months to unravel the stories, but it took three times as long. The Pocket Cardinal edition paperback was released in April 1965.įinding the answers to those questions is what journalist William Bradford Huie set out to accomplish, a task suggested to him by his publisher. Those activities were dwarfed by the wild gun-running and armaments plot, which was supposed to lead to an air-supported coup in Cuba in 1947.Ĭontradictory statements, immature, erratic behavior and the abandonment of the most basic duties as a husband and father: Was Eatherly a delusional, mentally ill individual a publicity-seeking con man with a penchant for gambling, drinking and chasing women or did he truly feel guilty for and embrace repentance over his role - which in reality was a footnote in history - at Hiroshima? If what he said was questionable, on the flip side, there was plenty of documentation about his criminal record, including charges of passing bad checks, forging others, armed robbery and breaking into several post offices in Texas to steal blank money drafts. And as such, he was being held for various lengths of time at a veterans’ hospital in Waco, Texas. Unfortunately, rigorous fact-checking was not carried out before publication.įormer Major Claude Eatherly, later in the guise of an antinuclear activist, claimed he was a political prisoner of the Air Force, which the Soviet Union picked up on for propaganda purposes in the early 1960s. Various articles published in the United States, Europe and Japan also said he was the man who picked Hiroshima as the target city, and that furthermore he was part of the atomic mission over Nagasaki, three days after Hiroshima. Putnam and Sons, April 1964 Pocket Cardinal edition, April 1965)įor a time in the 1950s and 1960s, a former Army Air Forces officer was portrayed in some international press reports as being the Hiroshima pilot - the aviator who was in command of the aircraft that released the first atomic bomb used in combat over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. “The Hiroshima Pilot” by William Bradford Huie (G.P.
Photo courtesy of the United States Air Force Some of the flight and support crew of the B-29 Superfortress Straight Flush: Top row, from left: 2nd Lt.