Flames in different spots would be springing up. "And fires, I could see fires spring up through this undercast, or whatever you would call it, that was covering the city. It looked like bubbling molasses, let's say, spreading out and running up into the foothills, just covering the whole city." I could see the city, and it was being covered with this low, bubbling mass. "As we got further away, I could see the city then, not just the mushroom, coming up.
I think that's how I described it on the intercom," Caron said years later in an interview. Well, it was white on the outside and it was sort of a purplish black towards the interior, and it had a fiery red core, and it just kept boiling up. I described the mushroom cloud as it grows. Paul Tibbets, who named the B-29 the "Enola Gay" after his mother, told Caron to describe what he saw to the crew over the intercom. Udvar Hazy Center of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and can be viewed by the public.An aerial view of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. As of, the fully restored Enola Gay is located at the Steven F. was the world’s first atomic bomb, and Special Mission No. 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. The crew of the Enola Gay guessedbut had not been told what the weapon in its bomb bay was. 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. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and changed the face of warfare. 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. 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.
6, 1945, accompanying the Enola Gay, piloted by Col. 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. Having the rank of major in the Army Air Forces at the time, he flew his bomber, the Great Artiste, to Hiroshima on the morning of Aug.