Enola Gay

Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of pilot Paul Tibbets. On August 6, 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb as a weapon of war. The bomb, code-named Little Boy, was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused extensive destruction. The Enola Gay was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company (now Lockheed Martin) at its Bellevue, Nebraska, plant, at what is now known as Offutt Air Force Base, and was one of fifteen B-29s with the "Silverplate" modifications necessary to deliver atomic weapons, which included an extensively modified bomb bay with pneumatic doors, special propellors, modified engines, and the deletion of protective armor and gun turrets. Enola Gay was personally selected by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., commander of the 509th Composite Group, on May 9, 1945, while still on the assembly line. The first atomic bombing was followed three days later by another B-29, Bockscar, (piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney) which dropped a second nuclear weapon, Fat Man, on Nagasaki, Japan. The Nagasaki mission has been described as tactically botched although the mission had met its objectives. The crew encountered a number of problems in execution and Bockscar had very little fuel by the time it landed on Okinawa. On that mission, Enola Gay, flown by Capt. George Marquardt, was the weather reconnaissance aircraft for Kokura. The Enola Gay gained additional attention in 1995 when the cockpit and nose section of the aircraft was exhibited during the bombing's 50th anniversary at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in downtown Washington, D.C. Since 2003 the entire restored B-29 has been on display at the museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.