It was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll and left Kwajalein on July 1, the date of the test, and reached Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Field, California, the next day. On April 29, 1946, Enola Gay left Roswell as part of Operation Crossroads and flew to Kwajalein on May 1. On November 6, 1945, Lewis flew the Enola Gay back to the United States, arriving at the 509th's new base at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico, on November 8. George Marquardt, aircraft commander, see Necessary Evil for crew details), was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura. On that mission Enola Gay, flown by Crew B-10 (Capt. The Nagasaki mission, by contrast, has been described as tactically botched although it met its objectives, it encountered a number of mistakes in execution and Bockscar had barely enough fuel to make an emergency landing on Okinawa. Sweeney) which dropped a second nuclear weapon, "Fat Man", on Nagasaki. The first atomic bombing was followed three days later by another B-29 (Bockscar) (piloted by Major Charles W. The Hiroshima mission has been described as tactically flawless, and Enola Gay returned safely to its base on Tinian to great fanfare on the base. Tibbets himself, interviewed on Tinian later that day by war correspondents, confessed that he was a bit embarrassed at having attached his mother's name to such a fateful mission.
According to Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts (Enola Gay, Stein & Day Pub, 1977), regularly assigned aircraft commander Robert Lewis was unhappy to be displaced by Tibbets for the important mission, and furious when he arrived at the aircraft on the morning of 6 August to see it painted with the now-famous nose art. On August 5, 1945, during preparation for the first atomic mission, Tibbets had the plane named after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets (1893–1983, who had been named for the heroine of a novel). After flying eight training missions and two combat missions during July, the plane was used on July 31 on a rehearsal for the actual mission, with a dummy Little Boy assembly dropped off Tinian. It was assigned victor number 12, which was later changed to 82. Thirteen days later it left Wendover for Guam, where it received a bomb bay modification, and flew to Tinian on July 6. Robert Lewis, aircraft commander), who flew the plane from Omaha to the 509th's base at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, on June 14, 1945. The airplane was accepted by the USAAF on May 18, 1945, and assigned to Crew B-9 (Capt. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group, on while still on the assembly line as the B-29 he would use to fly the atomic bomb mission. Martin Company at its Omaha, Nebraska, plant and personally selected by Colonel Paul W. The plane was one of 15 B-29s with the final "Silverplate" modifications necessary to deliver nuclear bombs.
#The pilot of enola gay riding out of a shock serial number
Udvar-Hazy Center annex near Dulles International Airport in Virginia.Ĭolonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit before the bombing of HiroshimaĮnola Gay (B-29-45-MO, serial number 44-86292, victor number 82) was assigned to the USAAF's 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group and flew the August 6 mission out of Tinian, a large island with several USAAF bases in the Mariana Islands chain. In 2003, Enola Gay went on display at NASM's new Steven F.
The plane gained additional national attention in 1994 when an exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution was changed due to a controversy over its historical script. Because of its role in the atomic bombings of Japan, its name has been synonymous with the controversy over the bombings themselves. Enola Gay is the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped "Little Boy", the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare, when the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) attacked Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, just before the end of World War II.