![enola gay name enola gay name](https://i1.wp.com/www.raptisrarebooks.com/images/73692/signed-photograph-of-the-enola-gay-crew.jpg)
Two other B-29s escorted Enola Gay on the mission and provided measuring and photography equipment. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay waves from the cockpit before taking off to Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Enola Gay took off from the Northern Mariana Islands on 6 August, piloted by Tibbet. On 5 August, Tibett assumed command of the B-29 and named it after his mother. In July 1945, Enola Gay flew eight training flights and two missions to drop conventional bombs over Kobe and Nagoya. When delivered to the USAF on, they assigned it to 393d Bombardment Squadron. Tibbets personally chose the airplane for his command. While still on the assembly line, Enola Gay, pilot Paul W. With the nuclear bomb over Nagasaki three days later, the attacks ultimately ended World War 2. The explosion destroyed about 75% of the city, killing tens of thousands. He had named the bomber after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, Enola Gay dropped the nuclear bomb Little Boy over Hiroshima. The Enola Gay on Tinian in the Marianas Islands where it took off before bombing Hiroshima in 1945.Įnola Gay became the first aircraft to drop a nuclear bomb in warfare despite its short service life. It is one of only 65 B-29s built under the "Silverplate" specifications, making them capable of carrying nuclear weapons. When the B-29 entered service in 1944, it was one of the largest aircraft in all of World War II.Įnola Gay left the assembly line on in Bellevue, Nebraska, and stayed in service until its retirement on 24 July 1946. The B-29 Superfortress was a 4-engine, propeller-driven bomber aircraft and was one of the most advanced aircraft in World War II. About the Enola GayĮnola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber aircraft manufactured in 1945. It stood for decades abandoned, left outside to the elements, souvenir hunters, and animals. However, Enola's road to the museum was long. Thanks to the effort of the Smithsonian staff members, Enola Gay is on public display today. Not only is it one of just 26 Boeing B-29 bombers still existing, but it is also the plane that dropped the nuclear bomb over Hiroshima in 1945. Instead of 12 men on the Enola Gay, people would think there were only nine.Out of the 3.970 Boeing B-29 bombers ever built, Enola Gay is perhaps the most well-known. Jeppson was worried that without some addition, the importance of his role, along with that of Navy Capt.
![enola gay name enola gay name](https://ww2db.com/images/battle_hiroshima265.jpg)
Jeppson was concerned because he learned his name, along with two others, would be absent from a list of crew members long-ago stenciled on the side of the infamous B-29 bomber by the military.
![enola gay name enola gay name](https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/9561/10433147_1.jpg)
![enola gay name enola gay name](https://i.pinimg.com/200x150/a8/67/e1/a867e136728b626a2e39c6c6b92810b1.jpg)
The new Udvar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum was about to open with the Enola Gay on display. It was 2003 when Jeppson felt compelled to come forward. Today he lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Molly, retired after a career spent at the helm of a handful of high-tech companies and working as consultant for the Department of Energy. Jeppson turned to graduate studies at University of California, Berkeley, after leaving the military. Now 90, Tibbets lives in a modest brick home in a well-kept neighborhood in Columbus and travels occasionally for air shows and veterans’ ceremonies. Most of the lives saved were Japanese,” the 84-year-old said from his suburban Atlanta retirement home near the base of Stone Mountain, where a large relief memorial carved out of the bare rock depicts Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E. “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. The 9,000-pound bomb fell down toward the city as the Enola Gay banked away, the crew hoping to escape with their lives.ĭespite decades of controversy over whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb - which left some 140,000 dead in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki three days later - Van Kirk remains convinced it was necessary because it shortened the war and relieved the Allies of having to mount a land invasion that might have cost far more lives on both sides. Under cover of night, he guided the bomber nearly exactly as planned - the plane was just 15 seconds behind schedule. It was a perfect mission, Van Kirk recalls. Van Kirk, then 24, was the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped “Little Boy” - the world’s first atomic bomb - over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug.