Wow! I didn't know this about Paul Tibbets.....at least from Lewis's point of view. That may rewrite some of the history. I wonder if this will be further explained in the forthcoming book? The below text is located on page 162 of the auction booklet.
Quote:
An extraordinary series of log books carefully filled for every day that
Lewis flew, the pages of proforma logging his flight plan, duration, type
of plane, engines, and horsepower with a column for remarks. On
combat missions from Tinian he adds in details of targets, bomb altitude
and poundage dropped. His remarks are illuminating: at the end after
the 9 Jan 1946 he adds “36 flights in Enola Gay #(6292). Tibbets was
on 2 Flights.” Although an official manuscript log for a pilot (something
every pilot was supposed to do) this log is revealing in its suggestion
that Tibbets was completely inexperienced at flying a B-29.
Against August 6, 1945 Lewis writes: “No#1 Atomic bomb a huge
success 8900 lbs hit center of city.” On December 13, 1944 his
remarks against a 20 minute local flight “Paul checked me out.” Later
as an older man he goes over each page of entries in the months
running up to the mission and adds near the bottom of each page the
total of B-29 flights that page records, the addition of these flights on
B-29s being 61 hours. The hand is shaky, as of an older man, looking
back at the past at the injustice he had felt had been served out to
some the crew that were forced out after training so hard with him.
That injustice, the moment when Paul Tibbets joined the flight crew as
“Commander”(with insufficient flying training on B-29s) and brought
two of his friends with him to join the crew, seemed to Lewis to have
been a flippant and dangerous move for the mission.
Of course he never spoke out. He wanted to object to Tibbets renaming
the aircraft after his mother the night before the flight, and was appalled
that Tibbets and Van Kirk joined the movie about the flight filmed in 1952
as advisors and then never shared any money they received amongst any
of the crew. The way that Tibbets received his DFC, in front of cameras
and invited media, then flew secretly to Guam to conduct a press
conference on the Hiroshima Bombing on August 7th, while at the same
time the rest of the crew flew a conventional bomb mission to Japan
before they supported Sweeney on the Nagasaki mission that took place
on the 8th August. Lewis was an honorable, quiet man, who remained
aggrieved at the behavior of Tibbets that August in 1945 and following. (2)
$150,000 - 200,000
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