B-29 'Enola Gay'

Originally Posted by Platapus

Ok, I'll bite.

Why was the crew of the Enola Gay any more heroic than any other bomber crew (nuclear or otherwise)...

Edit:
Ok, just throwing a smiley in might not suffice and is not really fair, so let me add some words.
I was being sarcastic when I called the E. Gay crew "true heroes", for they are not. Not at all.

Why? Because they executed an order they should not have.

Now, the following is easy to say, yet I stand by it and this reflects my honest opinion:
Dropping little boy on Hiroshima was a terrible act of mass murder - nothing else.
The official reason was "to end the war", yet after all it was a weapon test with some nice side effects like achieving nuclear supremacy and waving the nuclear index finger towards Russia,
resulting in flushing out thousands (~150k?) of civilian lives and causing unimaginable pain and agony for generations.

"But they did their duty! That is honorable! Someone had to!".
Thank you for mentioning that, since I suck at bringing my points across, I will let help me.

To this day, I struggle to understand how the uses of 'Little Boy' and later 'Fat Man' are today so widely accepted and tolerated, with a simple shoulder shrug and an empty-minded "well, they had to".
And this from a 'Nation under God'.

Despite the tremendous double-moral and hypocrisy (dropping nuclear bombs killing 220000+ people to 'save lives'), it makes me sick when I see these events being remembered in... somewhat of a positive light.
Not saying this thread did that, at all... it just triggered me I guess, forgive my weakness.