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These modifications included an extensively modified bomb bay with pneumatic doors and British bomb attachment and release systems, reversible pitch propellers that gave more braking power on landing, improved engines with fuel injection and better cooling, and the removal of protective armor and gun turrets. The bomber was one of the first fifteen B-29s built to the " Silverplate" specification- of 65 eventually completed during and after World War II-giving them the primary ability to function as nuclear "weapon delivery" aircraft. Martin Company (later part of Lockheed Martin) at its bomber plant in Bellevue, Nebraska, located at Offutt Field, now Offutt Air Force Base.
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The Enola Gay (Model number B-29-45-MO, Serial number 44-86292, Victor number 82) was built by the Glenn L. The last survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93. Since 2003, the entire restored B-29 has been on display at NASM's Steven F. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the National Mall, for the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid controversy. In the 1980s, veterans groups engaged in a call for the Smithsonian to put the aircraft on display, leading to an acrimonious debate about exhibiting the aircraft without a proper historical context. Later that year it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, and spent many years parked at air bases exposed to the weather and souvenir hunters, before being disassembled and transported to the Smithsonian's storage facility at Suitland, Maryland, in 1961. In May 1946, it was flown to Kwajalein for the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in a secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead.Īfter the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. Enola Gay participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. The bomb, code-named " Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused the destruction of about three quarters of the city. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. The Enola Gay ( / ə ˈ n oʊ l ə/) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets.
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National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Paul Tibbets waving from the Enola Gay 's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima For other uses, see Enola Gay (disambiguation). We were all dumbfounded.This article is about the bomber. "We just looked at each other we didn't talk. "Things were very, very quiet," Gackenbach says. The plane circled twice around the mushroom cloud and then turned to head home. He got out of his seat, quickly picked up his camera and took two photographs out the navigator's side window. The first thing Gackenbach saw was a blinding light and then the start of a mushroom cloud. Then, the radio went dead: that was the signal from the Enola Gay that the bomb had been released. "We were not told anything about the cloud, just don't go through it."Īs they made their final approach to Hiroshima, they were flying 30,000 feet over the city. "We were told that once the explosion occurred, we should not look directly at it, that we should not go through the cloud," he says. Gackenbach was part of the 10-man crew that flew on the Necessary Evil. The atomic bomb explosion photographed from 30,000 feet over Hiroshima on Aug. They had different engines, fewer guns and a larger bomb bay. Their planes were reconfigured B-29 Superfortress bombers.
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The 509th Composite Group, lead by Tibbets, spent months training in Wendover, Utah, before being shipped off to an American air base on the Pacific island of Tinian. Tibbets said it would be dangerous but if they were successful, it could end the war. Paul Tibbets, who was recruiting officers for a special mission. After completing his training, he was approached by Col. Gackenbach enlisted in the Army Aviation Cadet Program in 1943. Today, the 95-year-old is the only surviving crew member of those three planes. Army Air Corps and a navigator on the mission. Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S. There were three strike planes that flew over Hiroshima that day: the Enola Gay, which carried the bomb, and two observation planes, the Great Artiste and the Necessary Evil.
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It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Russell Gackenbach was the navigator aboard the Necessary Evil.