The bomber was one of 15 B-29s with the " Silverplate" modifications necessary to deliver atomic weapons. Martin Company (now Lockheed Martin) at its Bellevue, Nebraska plant, located at what is now known as Offutt Air Force Base.
#The enola gay crew serial number#
The Enola Gay (Model number B-29-45-MO, Serial number 44-86292, Victor number 82) was built by the Glenn L. 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) in downtown Washington, D.C., for the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid a storm of controversy. In the 1980s, veterans groups began agitating for the Smithsonian to put the aircraft on display. 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.
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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 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 atomic 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 unprecedented destruction. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line. National Air and Space Museum's Steven F.
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Ferebee, then 26 and a veteran of 64 combat missions, was napping and initially did not hear the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr., brief the crew about their top-secret mission.Īpproaching Hiroshima, Ferebee activated the plane’s automated Norden bombsight, centered its crosshairs on the Aioi Bridge and called “bomb away.” It was 8:15 a.m.
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from Tinian Island in the western Pacific. The 12-man crew aboard the B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off for Hiroshima at 2 a.m. Army Air Corps bombardier and Mocksville native, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 6, 1945, Major Thomas Wilson Ferebee, a U.S.