paragraph_text: The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing killed 168 people, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one - third of the building. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16 - block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars, causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated eleven of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations. The Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil until the September 11 attacks six years later, and it still remains the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in United States history.

paragraph_text: The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about three hours, while still nearly 160 km (100 mi) from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the bomb. After circling the city in order to survey the damage they landed south of the city, where the staff officer, after reporting to Tokyo, began to organize relief measures. Tokyo's first indication that the city had been destroyed by a new type of bomb came from President Truman's announcement of the strike, sixteen hours later.

paragraph_text: 6998150000000000000 ♠ 1.5 × 10 -- 6998200000000000000 ♠ 2 × 10 17.4 -- 23.2 GWh The Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, exploded with an energy of about 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ), and the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, exploded with an energy of about 20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ). The modern nuclear weapons in the United States arsenal range in yield from 0.3 kt (1.3 TJ) to 1.2 Mt (5.0 PJ) equivalent, for the B83 strategic bomb.

paragraph_text: Violent crime in New York City has been dropping since the mid-1990s and, as of 2017, is among the lowest of major cities in the United States. In 2017, there were 290 homicides, the lowest number since the 1940s.

paragraph_text: Douglas Brian "Pete" Peterson (born June 26, 1935) is an American politician and diplomat. He served as a United States Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War and spent over six years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese army after his plane was shot down. He returned to Hanoi when he became the first United States Ambassador to Vietnam in 1997. He was an ambassador until July 2001, after which he devoted himself to philanthropic work.

paragraph_text: The war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the subsequent German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan formally surrendered on 2 September 1945. Thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies.

paragraph_text: Loge continued during October. According to German sources, 9,000 short tons (8,200 t) of bombs were dropped in that month, of which about 10 percent of which was dropped in daylight. Over 6,000 short tons (5,400 t) was aimed at London during the night. Attacks on Birmingham and Coventry were subject to 500 short tons (450 t) of bombs between them in the last 10 days of October. Liverpool suffered 200 short tons (180 t) of bombs dropped. Hull and Glasgow were attacked, but 800 short tons (730 t) of bombs were spread out all over Britain. The Metropolitan-Vickers works in Manchester was targeted and 12 short tons (11 t) of bombs dropped against it. Little tonnage was dropped on Fighter Command airfields; Bomber Command airfields were hit instead.

paragraph_text: The Enola Gay (/ ɪˈnoʊlə ˈɡeɪ /) is a Boeing B - 29 Superfortress bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The bomb, code - named ``Little Boy '', was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused unprecedented destruction. Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in a secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead.

paragraph_text: On 6 August 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in the first nuclear attack in history. In a press release issued after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Truman warned Japan to surrender or "...expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth." Three days later, on 9 August, the U.S. dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the last nuclear attack in history. More than 140,000–240,000 people died as a direct result of these two bombings. The necessity of the atomic bombings has long been debated, with detractors claiming that a naval blockade and aerial bombing campaign had already made invasion, hence the atomic bomb, unnecessary. However, other scholars have argued that the bombings shocked the Japanese government into surrender, with Emperor finally indicating his wish to stop the war. Another argument in favor of the atomic bombs is that they helped avoid Operation Downfall, or a prolonged blockade and bombing campaign, any of which would have exacted much higher casualties among Japanese civilians. Historian Richard B. Frank wrote that a Soviet invasion of Japan was never likely because they had insufficient naval capability to mount an amphibious invasion of Hokkaidō.

paragraph_text: Commander Willis Bradley Haviland, (10 March 1890 – 28 November 1944) was a pioneer military pilot in World War I and a Naval Air Station Commanding Officer in World War II. As the sixteenth American volunteer in the Lafayette Escadrille, he was among the first air combat pilots to fight the Germans in World War I, before the United States officially entered the war. He would later become the first pilot to launch a plane from a battleship.

paragraph_text: Behind the scenes, the Soviet government was working on building its own atomic weapons. During the war, Soviet efforts had been limited by a lack of uranium but new supplies in Eastern Europe were found and provided a steady supply while the Soviets developed a domestic source. While American experts had predicted that the Soviet Union would not have nuclear weapons until the mid-1950s, the first Soviet bomb was detonated on August 29, 1949, shocking the entire world. The bomb, named ``First Lightning ''by the West, was more or less a copy of`` Fat Man'', one of the bombs the United States had dropped on Japan in 1945.

paragraph_text: On 30 September 1915, troops of the Serbian Army observed three enemy aircraft approaching Kragujevac. Soldiers shot at them with shotguns and machine-guns but failed to prevent them from dropping 45 bombs over the city, hitting military installations, the railway station and many other, mostly civilian, targets in the city. During the bombing raid, private Radoje Ljutovac fired his cannon at the enemy aircraft and successfully shot one down. It crashed in the city and both pilots died from their injuries. The cannon Ljutovac used was not designed as an anti-aircraft gun, it was a slightly modified Turkish cannon captured during the First Balkan War in 1912. This was the first occasion in military history that a military aircraft was shot down with ground-to-air fire.

paragraph_text: During the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The United States had dropped the bombs with the consent of the United Kingdom as outlined in the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed at least 129,000 people (most of whom were civilians) and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.

paragraph_text: Charles W. Sweeney (December 27, 1919 -- July 16, 2004) was an officer in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and the pilot who flew Bockscar carrying the Fat Man atomic bomb to the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Separating from active duty at the end of World War II, he later became an officer in the Massachusetts Air National Guard as the Army Air Forces transitioned to an independent U.S. Air Force, eventually rising to the rank of major general.

paragraph_text: Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. (23 February 1915 -- 1 November 2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force. He is best known as the pilot who flew the Enola Gay (named after his mother) when it dropped Little Boy, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

paragraph_text: By August 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs, and the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the Boeing B - 29 Superfortress that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Orders for atomic bombs to be used on four Japanese cities were issued on July 25. On August 6, the U.S. dropped a uranium gun - type (Little Boy) bomb on Hiroshima, and American President Harry S. Truman called for Japan's surrender, warning it to ``expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. ''Three days later, on August 9, a plutonium implosion - type (Fat Man) bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Within the first two to four months following the bombings, the acute effects of the atomic bombings had killed 90,000 -- 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 -- 80,000 in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. During the following months, large numbers died from the effect of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison.

paragraph_text: During the final stage of World War II, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. The United States dropped the bombs after obtaining the consent of the United Kingdom, as required by the Quebec Agreement. The two bombings killed 129,000 -- 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians. They remain the only use of nuclear weapons in the history of warfare.

paragraph_text: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that a "spy-plane" had been shot down but intentionally made no reference to the pilot. As a result, the Eisenhower Administration, thinking the pilot had died in the crash, authorized the release of a cover story claiming that the plane was a "weather research aircraft" which had unintentionally strayed into Soviet airspace after the pilot had radioed "difficulties with his oxygen equipment" while flying over Turkey. The Soviets put Captain Powers on trial and displayed parts of the U-2, which had been recovered almost fully intact.

paragraph_text: By August 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bomb, and the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) was equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the Boeing B - 29 Superfortress that could deliver them from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. Orders for atomic bombs to be used on four Japanese cities were issued on July 25. On August 6, one of its B - 29s dropped a Little Boy uranium gun - type bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, a Fat Man plutonium implosion - type bomb was dropped by another B - 29 on Nagasaki. The bombs immediately devastated their targets. Over the next two to four months, the acute effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000 -- 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 39,000 -- 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. Large numbers of people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition, for many months afterward. In both cities, most of the dead were civilians, although Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison.

paragraph_text: Längenbühl is a village in the canton of Bern, Switzerland. The former municipality of the district of Thun merged with Forst on January 1, 2007 to form Forst-Längenbühl.

Question: Who piloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on the first Japanese city to be targeted?
Answer: Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr.