The second bomb, which was a plutonium device titled fat man was dropped on Nagasaki, japan by Bocks. 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. It was named after the pilots (Paul Tibbets) mother. 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. Alvarez, who would later win the Nobel Prize in physics, sat aboard the Great Artiste flying at. 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. As the Enola Gay and its two escort planes headed back Tinian, a young scientist named Luis W. It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. The B-29 (also called Superfortress) was a four-engine heavy bomber that was built by Boeing. Tibbets guided the plane, named after his mother Enola Gay, from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean towards its intended target the Japanese city of. The aircraft was named after the mother of pilot Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr.
exhibitions has become a political battleground. Enola Gay, the B-29bomber that was used by the United StatesAugust 6, 1945, to drop an atomic bombHiroshima, Japan, the first time the explosive device had been used on an enemy target. 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. The restored forward fuselage of the B-29 Enola Gay as it now appears in the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum.