The airplane: the Enola Gay. The commander: Colonel Paul Tibbets. The date: August 6, 1945. The event: Special Bombing Mission #13 (caution: reading that MetaFilter thread may bring your blood to a boil). The world changed.

More about Tibbets: He did much more than simply fly a plane and keep it level while someone dropped a bomb.

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Tibbets was selected, after nearly a year of scrutiny from the brass, to effectively plan, organize, train, and execute the entire mission. He spent months selecting the right people, training them, preparing them, all from the secrecy of a “from scratch” military base in the barren desert of Utah, and had to enforce such strict security during this time that it nearly cost him his marriage. He had to coordinate the engineers, the pilots, the navs, the bombardiers, the mechanics, the medics, and so on. He had to ensure that no one leaked a word about the project. He had to fight powerful brass that didn’t know what he had been charged with, in order to secure hardware, personnel, and materials. He had to devise & test every possible scenario, dropping test bombs over & over to ensure that the “Real Thing” would detonate at precisely the right altitude. He had to select the precise date, location, and route. And, in the end, he had to lead the mission on that August day and give the order to drop the bomb.

His preparation and leadership ensured that the mission was executed flawlessly. Finally - he had to & still must live with the knowledge that his actions, his efforts, were pivotal in human history and resulted in the death of thousands of people (many innocent) while at the same time effectively ending the war and making the world literally a safer place for democracies & freedom. And, incidentally, secured America’s position as the leader of the free world.