In 1949, the Smithsonian Institution assumed control of the plane, and it is now part of the Air and Space Museum. Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay landing after the atomic bombing mission on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 30, 1946, the Enola Gay was placed in storage and never flew another combat mission. Martin Company delivered the plane to the military on May 18, 1945. The 509th Composite Group, born in secrecy Dec. The United States military kept the Enola Gay in use for only a short period of time. The Enola Gay lurched as the the 10,000 pounds Mk I bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, dropped out of the bomb bay. Tibbets named the plane after his mother. Little Boy atomic bomb it dropped on Hiroshima. Captain Paul Tibbets, the Enola Gay's pilot, personally selected this plane to drop the atomic bomb. This sec- tion would feature the fuselage of the Enola Gay and a replica of the. The plane had a 2,200-horsepower engine, with a maximum speed of 360 miles per hour and a range of 3,250 miles. Martin Company assembled it in Omaha, Nebraska, in early 1945. Five planes would go on the mission 3 weather aircraft to chart the weather over three potential target cities, the attack plane itself, and a laboratory plane to measure the effects of the blast. The mission was set for the first week in August, 1945. The aircraft was named after the mother of pilot Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. The 509th bomb group had arrived for their mission to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. Boeing Aircraft Company manufactured the plane, and the Glenn L. Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber 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. This atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, along with a second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, prompted the Japanese government to surrender, bringing World War II to an end.
On August 6, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The world entered the atomic age in August 1945, when the B-29 Superfortress nicknamed Enola Gay flew some 1,500 miles from the island of Tinian and dropped an.