Wed 6 Feb 2008
flight recordings of hiroshima bomber are up for auction
// category: bits
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As reported by Bloomberg:
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A World War II file folder recording the flights of Paul Tibbets, the U.S. pilot who led the atom- bomb raid on Hiroshima, will be offered this month by Bonhams auction house in Los Angeles for as much as $150,000.
The record comprises more than 500 typed pages documenting Tibbets’s flights, including 1937 training exercises in Texas and a 1942 daylight raid over German-occupied Europe. Tibbets, who died in November at age 92, commanded the “Enola Gay,” a B-29 plane named after his mother that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. The bomb killed at least 70,000 people instantly and demolished almost two-thirds of the Japanese city.
Evidently the demand for such a morbid record does exist:
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Demand for World War II documents is rising as manuscripts from earlier eras become scarcer and more expensive. A letter by Douglas MacArthur, the U.S. general who commanded Allied forces in the South Pacific, might fetch $2,000 today, or four times as much as 10 years ago, Bonhams said.
“There are a lot of institutions that are building World War II collections, and also private individuals,” said Catherine Williamson, a Bonhams director of books and manuscripts, in a telephone interview. She cited the National World War II Museum in New Orleans and the San Diego Air & Space Museum, which specializes in aviation.

