I wouldn’t settle for anything less than a quarter of a mile of accuracy, and I wouldn’t stand for anything less than 20 seconds off on time. Tibbets, 509th Composite Group commander, and orchestrator of the operational aspect of the original nuclear enterprise, the Manhattan Project, in an interview in 1966. “What I tried to do, initially, was to train individuals – then weld the individuals into a good, cohesive team to fly this B-29 better that anybody else was flying … that particular day,” said Lt. 17, 1944, was created for the sole purpose of delivering the world’s first nuclear weapon.īecause of the secret nature of their mission, the group trained at Wendover, Utah, and Tinian Island, in the Pacific, ever-perfecting the performance of the crew and their B-29 Superfortress bombers. The ground crew of the B-29 Enola Gay, posing for a photograph on Marianas Islands in Guan, atom-bombed Hiroshima, Japan. The B-29 (also called Superfortress) was a four-engine heavy bomber that was built by Boeing. The aircraft was named after the mother of pilot Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. The 509th Composite Group, born in secrecy Dec. Enola Gay, the B-29bomber that was used by the United States on August 6, 1945, to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the first time the explosive device had been used on an enemy target. Instead of 12 men on the Enola Gay, people would think there were only nine.The Enola Gay lurched as the the 10,000 pounds Mk I bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” dropped out of the bomb bay Jeppson was worried that without some addition, the importance of his role, along with that of Navy Capt. In the raid on Hiroshima, the Enola Gay was flown by Colonel Paul Tibbets Commanding Officer of the group. Jeppson was concerned because he learned his name, along with two others, would be absent from a list of crew members long-ago stenciled on the side of the infamous B-29 bomber by the military. The new Udvar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum was about to open with the Enola Gay on display.
It was 2003 when Jeppson felt compelled to come forward. Today he lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Molly, retired after a career spent at the helm of a handful of high-tech companies and working as consultant for the Department of Energy. Jeppson turned to graduate studies at University of California, Berkeley, after leaving the military. Now 90, Tibbets lives in a modest brick home in a well-kept neighborhood in Columbus and travels occasionally for air shows and veterans’ ceremonies. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. Most of the lives saved were Japanese,” the 84-year-old said from his suburban Atlanta retirement home near the base of Stone Mountain, where a large relief memorial carved out of the bare rock depicts Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E. The Enola Gay (/ n o l /) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets.On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run.
The 9,000-pound bomb fell down toward the city as the Enola Gay banked away, the crew hoping to escape with their lives.ĭespite decades of controversy over whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb - which left some 140,000 dead in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki three days later - Van Kirk remains convinced it was necessary because it shortened the war and relieved the Allies of having to mount a land invasion that might have cost far more lives on both sides. On that memorable summer day, a barnstorming pilot, Doug Davis, let the. The 9,000lb uranium-235 bomb exploded 1,900 feet above ground, killing between 60,000 and 80,000 people instantly. Attracted by the land boom, the Tibbets family moved to Florida when Paul was nine. Under cover of night, he guided the bomber nearly exactly as planned - the plane was just 15 seconds behind schedule. The flight crew of the Enola Gay before setting off to drop the Atomic Bomb. It was a perfect mission, Van Kirk recalls. Martin Company assembled it in Omaha, Nebraska, in. Van Kirk, then 24, was the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped “Little Boy” - the world’s first atomic bomb - over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. Boeing Aircraft Company manufactured the plane, and the Glenn L.