He'll forever be remembered for what he unleashed the morning of August 6, 1945. Tibbets Jr., retired brigadier general and former businessman, died on Nov. Thus began the nuclear age - an age that grows ever more dangerous with the continuing spread of nuclear weapons. Those victims also included American and Allied POWs and thousands of Koreans forcibly conscripted by the Japanese as wartime labor. Most of the bomb's victims were women, children, the elderly and other civilians not directly involved in the war. Many others were scarred and injured for life. The blast, fire and radiation killed 140,000 people.

That day Tibbets's B-29 - christened the 'Enola Gay' after his mother - dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.