In 1984, a restoration of the plane began. Its parts were kept in storage for over twenty years. In 1960, it was disassembled by a team from the Smithsonian Institution. Afterwards, the US government made a formal apology to Japan.Īfter its mission, the Enola Gay was kept at various air fields, before ending up at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. In 1976, Tibbets performed a re-enactment of the bombing in a restored B-29, at a Texas air show. In the years since, both Tibbets and the Enola Gay have been at the center of various controversies. The radioactive fallout from the bomb caused horrific damage for years afterwards. In a split second, Hiroshima ceased to exist. Below there was instant death and obliteration.
ENOLA GAY MOVIE 1980 SERIES
Little Boy’s explosion moved with a vertical velocity at just over the speed of sound.Īs Tibbets maneuvered the Enola Gay away from the blast, the plane was rocked by a series of shock waves. From the bomb’s fall to the initial 2,000 foot burst altitude (its mushroom cloud eventually climbed to 40,000 feet), it lasted 43 seconds (Tibbets would describe the cloud as “black as hell, and it had light and colors and white in it, and the top was like a folded up Christmas tree”). All I felt was that this was gonna be one hell of a big bang.”Īt 8:15 am on August 6th, the Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I’d never heard of anybody who’d seen 100 pounds of TNT blow up. He later said, “ the only thing we can tell you about it is, ‘It’s going to explode with the force of 20,000 tons of TNT.’ I’d never seen one pound of TNT blow up.
Tibbets was not completely briefed on the nature of the Little Boy bomb. This led to him being chosen to command the atomic bombing mission in Japan. He even served as a personal pilot to General Dwight Eisenhower.Īfter returning to the US in 1944, Tibbets did test flying of development B-29s. Over the course of the combat missions he flew in Europe during the first part of World War II, Tibbets earned a reputation as one of the best fliers in the service. After dropping out of college, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He said, ‘If you want to go kill yourself, go ahead, I don’t give a damn.’ Then Mom just quietly said, ‘Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you’re going to be all right.’” Tibbets later said, “My dad never supported me with the flying. On August 5th, while preparing for the mission, pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets named the B-29 after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. The planned attack on Hiroshima for August 1st was postponed for a few days because of a typhoon.
ENOLA GAY MOVIE 1980 CODE
On one, it dropped a 6300 “pumpkin” bomb, designed to simulate the “Fat Man” atomic bomb (the code name reportedly referred to Sydney Greenstreet’s character in the movie The Maltese Falcon), which would soon be dropped on Nagasaki. In the month leading up to the Hiroshima bombing, the plane, still unnamed, flew eight practice missions and two regular bombing missions over Japan.
The Navy turned it into a 40,000-person military base. The island, formerly under Japanese control and used as a sugar plantation, had been seized by U.S. The plane arrived on the South Seas island of Tinian in July 1945. The most famous war plane in history was built in 1945, as part of a batch of 15 Silverplate B-29 bombers specially modified for atomic bombing missions.