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The display, say the vets, is tilted against the U.S., portraying it as an unfeeling aggressor, while paying an inordinate amount of attention to Japanese suffering. Smithsonian staffers took the plane apart into smaller pieces and moved it inside. As the Smithsonian recounts, it stayed there until August of 1960, until preservationists grew worried that the decay of the historic artifact would reach a point of no return if it stayed outside much longer. It took its last flight in 1953, arriving on Dec. But even under the custody of the museum, the Enola Gay remained at an air force base in Texas. In the aftermath of World War II, the Army Air Forces flew the Enola Gay during an atomic test program in the Pacific it was then delivered to be stored in an airfield in Arizona before being flown to Illinois and transferred to the Smithsonian in July 1949. While it did not drop the bomb on Nagasaki, the Enola Gay did take flight to get data on the weather in the lead-up to the second strike on Japan.Īfter the war, the airplane took flight a few more times. dropped another atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. The plane returned to Tinian Island, from which it had come. Shortly after that, the first shock wave hit us, and the plane snapped all over.” All we saw in the airplane was a bright flash. on the turn and ran away as fast as we could. “Immediately took the airplane to a 180° turn. When the bomb left the airplane, the plane jumped because you released 10,000 lbs.,” Theodore Van Kirk, the plane’s navigator, later recalled.
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“It was just like any other mission: some people are reading books, some are taking naps. Udvar Hazy Center of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and can be viewed by the public.The Enola Gay is a B-29 Superfortress, which pilot Paul Tibbets named after his mother, and which had been stripped of everything but the necessities, so as to be thousands of pounds lighter than an ordinary plane of that make. As of, the fully restored Enola Gay is located at the Steven F. Work on its preservation and reconstruction did not begin until 1984 and the first phase lasted ten years after which parts of it were put on display between June 1995 and May 1998. In 1961 it was disassembled by the Smithsonian and moved to a restoration facility. It last flew on when it landed at Andrews AFB in Maryland where it was left to rust in outdoor storage until 1961. John Porter (ground maintenance officer)įollowing the end of the war, the Enola Gay took part in the nuclear program known as Operation Crossroads and was placed in storage at an Arizona airfield after being retired on before being given to the Smithsonian on. William Parsons, (Scientist on the Manhattan Project) Jacob Beser, radar (countermeasure officer) Tibbets ( pilot and CO of the 509th Group) The crew of the Enola Gay on that fateful Monday morning were: Three days later it flew again, this time towards Nagasaki, supporting the second atomic bomb drop with weather reconnaissance.
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This was the bomber's thirteenth mission and third combat mission, following raids on Kobe and Nagoya during the last eight days of July. By the time it returned at 1458 local time, the world had changed. He gave it the name and had it painted on the plane before taking off from Tinian Island in the Marianas at 0245 local time amidst a media circus. Tibbets as a tribute for her support of his becoming an aviator. The plane was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of the bomber's captain, Col. Įngines: Four 2200 HP Wright Cyclone R-3350īuilt at the Martin plant in Omaha, Nebraska, delivered and personally selected by Tibbets. Enola Gay was the name of the specially modified B-29 US Army Air Force long-range bomber of the 509th Composite Group that dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the morning of.