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. Tibbets, his crew, and the Enola Gay dropped the bomb (Little Boy) on Hiroshima Aug 6, 1945. Recollections of that day nearly 55 years ago have begun to fade. Jacob Beser, radar countermeasure officer. Enola Gay crew member Jeppson remembers famed flight Las Morris Dick Jeppson admits he was a bit of a greenhorn on Aug. 'Dutch' Van Kirk, navigator Major Thomas W. Lewis Co-pilot Enola Gays regularly assigned aircraft commander. 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 Enola Gay a B-29 was the first plane to drop an atomic bomb. The flight crew of the Enola Gay with ground maintenance officer, Lt. pilot and aircraft commander Captain Robert A. The 509th Composite Group, born in secrecy Dec. 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.The Enola Gay lurched as the the 10,000 pounds Mk I bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” dropped out of the bomb bay 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. After the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the plane which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on. Crew B-10 (regularly assigned to Up An Atom) flew the plane. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki being bombed instead. The Enola Gay is one of the most famous-some might call it infamous-aircrafts in history. Paul Tibbets and the crew of the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb over. Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. At 11:02 local time, the plane dropped a 10,000 pound plutonium bomb known. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused unprecedented destruction. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line.