Paul Tibbets has his indelible niche in the history of strategic air power as the commander of the aircraft that dropped the world's first nuclear weapon on a target in wartime. When the uranium device “Little Boy” was released from the belly of the B29 bomber Enola Gay at 8.15am on August 6, 1945, 31,000 feet over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, it was to unleash a chain of events that was to alter the face of warfare and man's future capacity to inflict damage upon his enemies.

Detonating 43 seconds later, 1,900 feet over the centre of the city with the force of 12.5 kilotons — the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT — Little Boy wreaked instantaneous destruction of a completeness unimagined in warfare up to that time. On the ground moments before the blast, it was a warm and sunny morning, and the citizens of Hiroshima were going about their business, in a mood of relief, after an earlier air-raid warning had been declared a false alarm. It had been provoked by the appearance of a US Army Air Force weather plane over the city, in itself full of foreboding for those who were able to understand the reasons for its presence.

Within half a minute the entire centre of Hiroshima, population 300,000, had been wrecked by blast and fire of a temperature never before experienced. As far as half a mile from “ground zero” — a grim term spawned by the world's first nuclear attack — virtually all life was destroyed in an instant. At more than a mile from the centre combustible material such as wood and paper ignited spontaneously in the heat.

The precise death toll has always been a matter of dispute. Some 80,000 peole died in the initial blast, but the ultimate toll from the effects of radiation may be as high as 200,000. The single word Hiroshima became totemic of the destructive power of the weapons of a new era and their effect on human beings.

It was perhaps the first time in warfare that a mighty conflict had been brought to a conclusion so quickly. It was a blow of such magnitude that it was difficult for the world to understand it at first, since there was simply nothing to compare it with, in what had gone before. The grateful populations of the Western alliance merely heaved a sigh of relief that a war that had endured for more than six years appeared so suddenly to be in sight of an end.

The instrument of this destruction (to be repeated by another B29 Bockscar against Nagasaki two days later) was Colonel Paul Tibbets, a pilot of the USAAF's 509th Composite Group, based at Tinian in the Marianas. The aftermath of the dropping of the bomb required all his skills. So great was the force of the explosion that Enola Gay, miles above it, was severely buffeted by the blast. Indeed, Tibbets at first thought she had been hit by anti-aircraft fire, so great was the shock. But he steadied his aircraft and dived away for safety with his crew, gaining home base after a return flight of more than five hours.

Paul Warfield Tibbets was born in Quincy, Illinois, in 1915, but grew up in Florida where, at the age of 12, he had his first ride in an aeroplane at an air show at Hialeah horse racing track near Miami. He was educated at Western Military Academy from where he went to the universities of Florida and Cincinatti with the intention of taking up a career in medicine in obedience to his parents' inclinations.

But the pull of flying proved stronger, and in 1937 he applied to join the Army Air Corps, as it then was, and was accepted as a flying cadet at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. The following year he gained his wings at Kelly Field, Texas, and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant.

In February 1942, with the Japanese air assault on Pearl Harbor having drawn the US into the war, Tibbets was given command of the 340th Bomb Squadron, in the 97th Bombardment Group, which was dispatched to air bases in the East of England with the idea of adding a daylight punch to the night offensive being waged by the RAF. Flying the B17 “Flying Fortress” (the Boeing predecessor to the B29 “Super Fortress”), he took part in 25 operational sorties, in November 1942 leading raids in support of the Anglo-American “Torch” invasion of French North Africa.

When the B29 — the most modern bomber on any side in the Second World War, with its huge range, 20,000lb bomb load, powerful cannon and machinegun defensive armament and unexampled crew comfort provided by a pressurised cabin — began to be tested, Tibbets returned to the US to help to iron out some of the initial problems germane to such an advanced and complex design. As such he gained an unmatched knowledge of the handling characteristics and potential of the aircraft.

In September 1944, with the Manhattan Project to produce an atomic bomb coming close to its goal, Tibbets was briefed on the weapon's potential to bring what was expected to be an internecine struggle for the Japanese homeland to a speedy close. His task was to form and train a squadron to deliver it to a series of important Japanese targets. It was to be wrapped in the tightest security at the squadron's base at Wendover, Utah.

Little Boy would be a bomb of around 8,000lb, less than half the B29's carrying capacity. To increase the bomber's range, and more important, its service ceiling over the target, Tibbets had its armour and gun turrets stripped out, and the bomb bay reconfigured for the dropping of the single nuclear weapon. Only the tail gunner was retained — in fact the B29's top speed of 360mph rendered it invulnerable to Japanese fighters at the heights at which it could fly.

Then, in the spring of 1945, the components of the squadron began to move in secrecy, piecemeal to their new base in the Mariana Islands, within striking range of the Japanese homeland. There Tibbets's aircraft was formally named Enola Gay as a tribute to his mother. In the afternoon of August 5, 1945, President Truman approved the use of the atomic bomb and at 2.25 am the following day, Enola Gay took off from Tinian and set course for her objective.

With “mission accomplished” she was to touch down again at Tinian after more than 12 hours in the air, at 2.58pm. Enola Gay was greeted by a large contingent of top brass, headed by the commander-in-chief of the US air forces in the theatre, and one of the pioneers of wartime bombing, General Carl “Tooey” Spaatz. From him Tibbets was awarded an immediate Disinguished Service Cross, the remainder of his crew each receiving the Air Medal.

Two days after the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 8, 1945, Japanese radio announced in a somewhat confusing message, that the government would be prepared to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration of July, which had defined the terms for its surrender. After a few more days of wrangling, the Emperor gave orders that the destruction of his country should be ended, and on August 15, the war formally came to an end.

After the war Tibbets took part in atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll, commanded bomber organisations in Strategic Air Command, and had senior staff appointments in the Pentagon. After retiring from the USAF in 1966, he had consultancies in civil aviation and in the 1980s was chairman of a taxi air service, Executive Jet Aviation.

As the tides of condemnation and approval of the nuclear bombings ebbed and flowed over the years, Tibbets had to bear his share of demonisation, even of proliferating myths that he had been driven insane by remorse. He stoutly defended the dropping of the bomb, and claimed it never cost him uneasy moments: “I sleep just fine.” On the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima he merely remarked wryly of his apparent notoriety: “It's getting kind of old — but then, so am I.”

He is survived by his wife, Andrea, and by two sons.

Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, bomber pilot, was born on February 23, 1915. He died on November 1, 2007, aged 92