Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, who died on 1 November, 2007, aged 92, was the American pilot of the first plane to drop an atomic bomb.

The Enola Gay, a B-29 ‘Superfortress’, dropped the A-bomb known as ‘Little Boy’ on Hiroshima, Japan, on 6 August, 1945, killing more than 100,000 people and leading to the Japanese surrender.

The plane was named after Tibbets’ "courageous red-haired mother, whose quiet confidence had been a source of strength to me since boyhood".

Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr was born on 23 February, 1915, in Quincy, Illinois, but was raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his father, Paul Warfield Tibbets, was a grocery wholesaler.

Despite being educated at Western military academy, where he learned to drive and experienced his first flight aged 12, he studied medicine at the University of Florida at his family’s behest.

However, by 1937 he had become disillusioned with the medical profession and enrolled in the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. His father disapproved, but his mother encouraged him in the career change.

By the time America entered the Second World War in 1942, Tibbets was commander of the 340th Bomb Squadron which was posted in England to complement the RAF’s European bombing raids. He flew in a B17 ‘Flying Fortress’ bomber with several other members of the future Enola Gay crew.

Later that year he led bombing raids in the successful ‘Operation Torch’ invasion of North Africa, but in 1943 a dispute with a Colonel led to him being sent back to America. There he began testing the newly-developed B-29 in Wichita, Kansas.

In 1944 he was appointed to the 393rd heavy bombardment squadron, the unit which was to carry the A-bomb, the culmination of America’s five-year Manhattan Project. The plane was stripped down and modified to carry nuclear bombs and the crew warned the blast could destroy their aircraft.

Brigadier General Tibbets named the plane the day before its flight. They set off from the base on the small Pacific island of Tinian and dropped the bomb at 8.15am local time. Six days later, and following a second bombing at Nagasaki, the Japanese Emperor announced his country’s surrender in the light of this "new and most cruel bomb".

Brigadier General Tibbets was hailed as "Florida’s Buck Rogers" by the press and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. He continued to work in the realm of atomic bombs, flying during the States’ continued testing in the 1950s. A posting in India towards the end of his career resulted in protests from the local population who described him as "the world’s greatest killer".

After retiring from the Air Force in 1966, he worked for the commercial airline Executive Jet Aviation and served as the company’s president between 1976 and his retirement in 1987.

Brigadier General Tibbets always maintained his conscience was clear. "I wanted to do everything that I could to subdue Japan," he said.

"I have been convinced that we saved more lives than we took. It would have been morally wrong if we’d have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die."

Brigadier General Tibbets was survived by his second wife, Andrea, two sons and his grandchildren. He died after spending the last few years of his life in hospice care following several small strokes and a heart attack. His will stated that he did not want a tombstone for fear that anti-nuclear demonstrators would desecrate it and that his ashes should be dispersed in the English channel.