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The bomber was one of the first fifteen B-29s built to the " Silverplate" specification- of 65 eventually completed during and after World War II-giving them the primary ability to function as nuclear "weapon delivery" aircraft. Martin Company (later part of Lockheed Martin) at its bomber plant in Bellevue, Nebraska, located at Offutt Field, now Offutt Air Force Base.
#Who was the co pilot of enola gay serial number
The Enola Gay (Model number B-29-45-MO, Serial number 44-86292, Victor number 82) was built by the Glenn L. The last survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93. 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. Udvar-Hazy CenterĪfter the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Paul Tibbets waving from the Enola Gay 's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in a secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead. 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 destruction of about three quarters of the city. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. The Enola Gay ( / ɪ ˈ n oʊ l ə/) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. For other uses, see Enola Gay (disambiguation). 6, 1945.This article is about the bomber.
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''If I live a hundred years, I'll never quite get these few minutes out of my mind,'' Captain Lewis said in his log of the Enola Gay's mission, written in pen and pencil on the back of War Department forms, on Aug. was chosen to command the B-29 to be used on the Hiroshima mission, he selected Captain Lewis, who had survived two crashes and had a reputation for remaining calm in moments of stress, as his co-pilot. He was then transferred to the West Coast to fly the B-29 on simulated attack missions. He was one of 12 servicemen with backgrounds in electronics who were chosen by the Army Air Corps to test the weapon systems on the B-29 Superfortress, then under development. Lewis, a native of Brooklyn, volunteered to join the Army shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was 65 years old and had lived in Smithfield, Va., for two years. Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died of a heart attack Saturday in Riverside Hospital in Newport News, Va.