Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in the secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead. Interesting fact: Enola Gay also took part in the second atomic attack on Japan: it was used as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the original target of Kokura. Male students are on their way to work at the munitions factory. As they orbited Yakushima, the weather planes Enola Gay (which had dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima) and Laggin Dragon reported both Kokura and Nagasaki within the accepted parameters for the required visual attack.
From where did the enola gay take off full#
It is high tide in the Sea of Japan, so the seven branches of the Ota River are completely full and still. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The Enola Gay is at an altitude of 31,060 feet with an air speed of 200 miles an hour when the City of Hiroshima first comes into view. In 2003, the fully restored Enola Gay went on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Work on restoring it – a project which spanned nearly twenty years – began in 1984. The two B-29’s that dropped the Atomic bombs on Japan (following a final ultimatum to surrender that was ignored) were called Enola Gay (named after the pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets Mother) which dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945 and Bockscar (piloted by Major Charles W. Little Boy exploded 1,900 feet (580 metres) above the city, killing tens of thousands of people and causing immense destruction.Įnola Gay remained in service until it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution in 1949. Tibbets instructed a maintenance man to paint the name "Enola Gay" on the aircraft's nose shortly before take-off on the Hiroshima mission. Lieutenant Colonel Tibbets flew the plane to Hiroshima where its deadly payload, an atomic bomb called Little Boy, was dropped from the plane and exploded over the city on August 6, 1945.Įnola Gay was a four-engine heavy bomber that had undergone a number of modifications, including reinforcements to its bomb bay. The Enola Gay took off from Walker Field at Roswell, New Mexico Where did the enola gay plane fly from in The Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian in the Northern Marshall Islands for its. The B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, was named after the mother of pilot Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. It was named after the pilot's mother (Pronounced en-oh-lah gay)Īll the engineers were old and gay (Enola Gay) who worked on the Enola Gay bomber plane. But when Tibbets died at age 92, he requested cremation with no headstone – and no funeral - military honors or not.Enola Gay – The B-29 bomber that was used by the United States to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. His grandson is an Air Force Academy graduate who came up flying B-2 Spirit bombers. His family was also a proud military family. He even re-enacted the bombing in a B-29 during a 1976 Texas air show and denounced the Smithsonian’s exhibition of the actual plane when it debuted because of the exhibition’s focus on the suffering of the Japanese people and not the brutality of the Japanese military. He proudly named his airplane Enola Gay after his beloved mother. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, he was one of the youngest but most experienced pilots in the Army Air Forces. It wasn’t that Tibbets wasn’t proud of his service. But instead of being interred at home or at Arlington National Cemetery with all his brothers in arms, he was cremated and his ashes spread across the English Channel.
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He was the man who dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat against an enemy city.
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0730- Enola Gay Captain Paul Tibbets announces to the crew: We are carrying the world’s first atomic bomb. The Enola Gay is accompanied by two observation aircraft, The Great Artiste and Necessary Evil. A flight log for the Enola Gay on its journey to Hiroshima was kept by the co-pilot Robert A Lewis. 0245- Early morning on Tinian, the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay and her crew of 12 lift off with the uranium bomb Little Boy aboard. He was never forgotten, however, and never would be. The Enola Gay flew the very first mission targeting a city Hiroshima with an atomic bomb. When Paul Tibbets died in January 2007, he had been retired from the Air Force since 1966.