Background
Ent, Uzal Girard was born on March 3, 1900 in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Oscar Wellington and Elizabeth (Girard) Ent.
Ent, Uzal Girard was born on March 3, 1900 in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Oscar Wellington and Elizabeth (Girard) Ent.
Ent could have parachuted to safety but, instead, chose to stay with the balloon, attempted to rescue the pilot and successfully piloted the balloon to the ground.
He served in the infantry from 1917 to 1919, and was commissioned into the US Air Service from West Point in 1924. On May 28, 1928 he was the co-pilot of a balloon in the National Balloon Race starting at Bettis Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the race, Ent's balloon was struck by lightning over Youngstown, Pennsylvania.
The lighting strike killed the pilot and set the balloon's hydrogen filled envelope on fire. After graduating from the Command and General Staff College in 1938 he served as a military attaché at the American Embassy, Lima, Peru from July 1939 until October 1942, acting as the senior neutral military observer on the Peruvian side after their boundary war with Ecuador. In September 1944, it was General Ent who selected Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets to put together an organisation and train them to drop atomic weapons from B-29 bombers.
Given Tibbets and two other names by General Arnold, General Ent replied without hesitation, "Paul Tibbets is the man to do it." In October 1944, Ent was seriously injured in the crash of a B-25 on takeoff at the Fort Worth Army Airfield, Texas. Paralyzed from the waist down he learned to walk again using braces. He retired (disability in line of duty) in 1946 with the rank of major general.
He died at Fitzsimons General Hospital in Denver, Colorado, on March 5, 1948.
Mason.
Married Eleanor Marwitz, November 24, 1929.