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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.
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“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. “It was just like any other mission: some people are reading books, some are taking naps. The last survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93.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. 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 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 the near-complete destruction of the city. Lewis it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A.
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The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets.