this, the pilot of the lead aircraft on that raid was a man by the name of alternates you will -- paul tibbets, you will recognize as the name of the man who dropped the bomb from the in only get. -- you know luxury -- ebnola gay. he opens the war in europe and closes the war in japan. we have the ark of this important -- arc of this important strategic bombing are. notice the date, d-day is almost two full years into the future. the great, dramatic battle of the day comes 11 months. the way the united states carried of the battle was only in the last days of the war on the ground. for three years it was from the air. chapter two, washington, d.c., october 5, 1942. a few weeks after the raid. a meeting in the office of a wartime bureaucrat by the name of donald nelson who have been the ceo of sears roebuck before the war and was now the head of the war production board. his job was to shift the economy to a wartime basis and to mobilize the country's resources to wage the war. he was working on the basis of a great blueprint called the victory program. capital v capital p. with the help of hig