Some fly ahead to check the weather to see what it’s like at the actual target, and Enola Gay was part of that for Nagasaki,” Kinney said.Īfter the bombings and the war’s quick end, the Enola Gay remained with the Army Air Forces, taking part in the Bikini Atoll atomic tests before being shipped to the Smithsonian in 1960. “Usually it’s a three- to four-ship formation. What some don’t know is that the Enola Gay flew that mission, too. Jacob Beser, the radar operator who tracked both bombs as they fell. Only one member of the Hiroshima mission was on it: Lt. The more powerful plutonium bomb known as Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki three days later by Bockscar, another B-29. “They recognized the loss of life and what that meant to the Japanese people, but they felt like it was necessary because they didn’t want more Americans to die in what they thought would be a bloody, long invasion. “ felt very strongly that the use of the atomic bomb ended World War II in the Pacific,” Kinney said. Boeing B-29 “Enola Gay” on Tinian in the Marianas Islands. The bombing brought controversy as it ushered in the nuclear age, but the crew was just doing its job, and it was clear they believed in what they did. Please Consider Disabling Your Ad Blocker Department of Energy, while tens of thousands more perished in the coming weeks due to radiation poisoning. Around 70,000 people died from the initial blast, according to the U.S. “I don’t think they really understood it until they saw it.”Īt the moment of impact, those closest to ground zero turned to char, while birds reportedly ignited in mid-air. I think that sank in with them, in the sense that you see the mushroom cloud and this firestorm and this city in ruin,” Kinney said. “What’s horrifying about this mission is that it’s one bomber, one bomb and one city. It was a moment for which none of the Enola Gay’s crew - miles away by then, but still rocked by the blast - was quite prepared. In one blinding flash, it leveled the heart of Hiroshima with the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. Thomas Ferebee dropped Little Boy - a 10,000 pound, uranium-enriched bomb - which detonated 1,800 feet above the city’s center.
Around 8:15 a.m., on a calm, sunny morning, bombardier Maj. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima, an important Japanese military center. “Lewis himself was bumped from command pilot to copilot.” “There was some animosity between, because … a lot of Lewis’ crew was bumped,” Kinney said. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, Japan, after the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb in combat on Aug.
He handpicked the plane the night before the mission, to the surprise of its crew, and had his mother’s name - Enola Gay - painted on its side. Paul Tibbets Jr., the commander of the 509th.
But Lewis would not end up leading the atomic mission. Robert Lewis, of the 509th Composite Group, from the factory to New Mexico, then to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, where its crew practiced flight maneuvers, loading the massive bomb and dropping it. 82 then, was flown by Army Air Forces Capt. Only the tail gun position was left to defend it from enemies. The remote-controlled gun turrets were also taken away to increase speed. “You have a 10,000 pound atomic bomb you have to carry, so you have to lighten the airplane.” Jeremy Kinney, the Air and Space Museum’s curator of American military aviation, 1919-1945. “All of the armor that protects the crew was removed to save weight,” said Dr. The famous B-29 Superfortress rolled off the Glenn Martin assembly line in the spring of 1945 with what was known as a “silverplate modification” specifically for the atomic mission. It’s a plane with a huge, controversial, world-changing story to tell. Seventy-five years ago, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, bringing an end to a long and devastating World War II and making the Enola Gay, the B-29 that delivered it, one of the most famous in history.