While this exhibit is now closed, Museum specialists continued to restore the remaining components of the airplane, and after an additional nine years the fully assembled Enola Gay went on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. A joint crew from Electronic Systems Center's Joint Test Force, part of Air. The atomic bomb is released over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. Ground crew works feverishly to prepare it for the next days mission. Navigator Theodore Dutch Van Kirk, bombardier Thomas Ferebee and radio operator Richard H. The exhibition text summarized the history and development of the Boeing B-29 fleet used in bombing raids against Japan.Īnother portion of the exhibit detailed the painstaking efforts of Smithsonian aircraft restoration specialists who had spent more than a decade restoring parts of the Enola Gay for this exhibition. Aircraft 44-86292 formally named Enola Gay after Col. He is best known as the pilot who flew the B-29 Superfortress known as the Enola Gay (named after his mother) when it dropped Little Boy, the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The components on display included two engines, the vertical stabilizer, an aileron, propellers, and the forward fuselage that contains the bomb bay.Ī video presentation about the Enola Gay's mission included interviews with the crew before and after the mission including mission pilot Col. (23 February 1915 1 November 2007) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force. Tibbets passed away on 1 November 2007 at 92 years of age.7 Captain Robert A. It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. Enola Gays crew on 6 August 1945 consisted of 12 men: Colonel Paul W. This past exhibition, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, told the story of the role of the Enola Gay in securing Japanese surrender.