Who is enola gay

In September , he was given command of the th Composite Group , the unit that would later drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But you have to combine that with the mission of the Enola Gay, which brings in the dimension of the role of technology in war.

Here we have one bomber with one bomb destroying one city. Tibbets was the group and aircraft commander for the flight. As lead pilot, he named the Enola Gay after his mother.

With him that day were copilot Capt. Robert Lewis , bombardier Maj. Thomas Ferebee , navigator Capt. Theodore Van Kirk , weaponeer Capt. William Parsons , assistant weaponeer Lt. Morris Jeppson , electronic countermeasure operator Lt. Jacob Beser , radar operator Sgt. Joseph Stiborik , radio operator Pvt. Richard Nelson , flight engineer Staff Sgt. Wyatt Duzenbury , assistant flight engineer Sgt. Robert H. Shumard and tail gunner Staff Sgt.

Robert Caron. Beser would also fly on the mission to Nagasaki on August 9 aboard the Bockscar , the B that delivered Fat Man , the second atomic bomb dropped in war. As the Enola Gay made its final approach to Hiroshima that day, Tibbets ascended to 31, feet, then turned over controls to Ferebee. He released the bomb at that morning. As the 10,pound Little Boy fell away, the aircraft lurched violently upward. Tibbets began evasive maneuvers and banked hard to return to base.

Forty-three seconds later, the bomb detonated at its predetermined height of 1, feet with the force of 15, tons of TNT. A huge mushroom cloud appeared over what had been the heart of Hiroshima. The Enola Gay was then buffeted violently when struck by two shock waves—one direct and the other reflected from the ground. Caron took photos from the tail of the plane and described what he saw over the intercom for the rest of the crew.

He later recounted the experience in his book Fire of a Thousand Suns :. A few crewmen claimed they heard him say them. The devastation of Hiroshima was apocalyptic. The city was almost completely leveled while a conservative estimate places the death toll at , people. Of course, this was not a fleet of Bs. This was two planes—the Enola Gay and the backup plane. The Japanese understandably assumed they were just weather planes.

We flew them over Japan all the time in advance of bombing missions. So nobody went into the shelters. In his book, Rhodes wrote about what happened on the ground just after Little Boy detonated. Mosquitoes and flies, squirrels, family pets crackled and were gone. The fireball flashed an enormous photograph of the city at the instant of its immolation fixed on the mineral, vegetable and animal surfaces of the city itself.

Then it exploded. All we saw in the airplane was a bright flash. Shortly after that, the first shock wave hit us, and the plane snapped all over. The plane returned to Tinian Island , from which it had come. A few days later, on Aug. 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.

After the war, the airplane took flight a few more times. 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 But even under the custody of the museum, the Enola Gay remained at an air force base in Texas.

It took its last flight in , arriving on Dec. As the Smithsonian recounts, it stayed there until August of , until preservationists grew worried that the decay of the historic artifact would reach a point of no return if it stayed outside much longer.

Smithsonian staffers took the plane apart into smaller pieces and moved it inside. But when the nearly page proposal for the exhibit was seen by Air Force veterans, the anniversary started a new round of controversy over the plane, as TIME explained in The display, say the vets, is tilted against the U. John T. Correll, editor in chief of Air Force Magazine , noted that in the first draft there were 49 photos of Japanese casualties, against only three photos of American casualties.

By his count there were four pages of text on Japanese atrocities, while there were 79 pages devoted to Japanese casualties and the civilian suffering, from not only the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also conventional B bombing. Politicians are getting in on the action. Any one of three Kansas museums. Adams, who is leaving his job after 10 relatively controversy-free years, sent back a three-page answer stiffly turning down her request for the Enola Gay.

This mission was piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, commanding officer of the th Composite Group, who named the bomber after his mother. The four-engine plane, followed by two observation planes carrying cameras and scientific instruments, was one of seven making the trip to Hiroshima, but only the Enola Gay was carrying a bomb — a bomb that was expected to knock out almost everything within a 3-mile 5-kilometer area.

Measuring over 10 feet 3 meters long and almost 30 inches 75 centimeters across, it weighed close to 5 tons 4. The Enola Gay weaponeer, Navy Capt.

Deak Parsons, was concerned about taking off with Little Boy fully assembled and live. Some heavily loaded Bs had crashed on takeoff from Tinian. If that happened to the Enola Gay, the bomb might explode and wipe out half the island.