Enola Gay

The Enola Gay is a <a href="/facts/Boeing_B-29_Superfortress/79pXKprr">Boeing B-29 Superfortress</a> <a href="/facts/Bomber/YKEYbswu">bomber</a>, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, <a href="/facts/Colonel_(United_States)/eva6u8ok">Colonel</a> <a href="/facts/Paul_Tibbets/pmR8CzEJ">Paul Tibbets</a>. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of <a href="/facts/World_War_II/2efV5L1U">World War II</a>, it became the <a href="/facts/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki/fRpj8aJA">first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare</a>. The bomb, code-named "<a href="/facts/Little_Boy/4XAsA7xT">Little Boy</a>", was targeted at the city of <a href="/facts/Hiroshima/WuFDhz14">Hiroshima</a>, Japan, and destroyed about three-quarters of the city. Enola Gay participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of <a href="/facts/Kokura/CbflKfC8">Kokura</a>. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in <a href="/facts/Nagasaki/5HMR4mnp">Nagasaki</a>, a secondary target, being bombed instead.
After the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from <a href="/facts/Walker_Air_Force_Base/rjTpvcd1">Roswell Army Air Field</a>, <a href="/facts/New_Mexico/wosJCGaW">New Mexico</a>. In May 1946, it was flown to <a href="/facts/Kwajalein/3tJ4WG6T">Kwajalein</a> for the <a href="/facts/Operation_Crossroads/tGWLh14I">Operation Crossroads</a> <a href="/facts/Nuclear_test/s2srGDFP">nuclear tests</a> in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at <a href="/facts/Bikini_Atoll/NrrgM5pd">Bikini Atoll</a>. Later that year, it was transferred to the <a href="/facts/Smithsonian_Institution/pqC74ta9">Smithsonian Institution</a> and spent many years parked at air bases exposed to the weather and souvenir hunters, before its 1961 disassembly and storage at a Smithsonian facility in <a href="/facts/Suitland%2c_Maryland/PyRx6tXX">Suitland, Maryland</a>.
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. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the <a href="/facts/National_Air_and_Space_Museum/CSDNqoSA">National Air and Space Museum</a> (NASM) on the <a href="/facts/National_Mall/z8VAJyTN">National Mall</a>, for the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid controversy. Since 2003, the entire restored B-29 has been on display at NASM's <a href="/facts/Steven_F._Udvar-Hazy_Center/SPGdDfmT">Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center</a>. The last survivor of its crew, <a href="/facts/Theodore_Van_Kirk/BXMwa8Ba">Theodore Van Kirk</a>, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93.

Enola Gay open-in-new

Enola Gay