General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, had warned the Enola Gays commander, Colonel Paul Tibbets, to expect 'a little publicity', but Tibbets and his crew are surprised by the scene of the. Bathed in floodlights, the B-29 Enola Gay awaits the start of its historic mission to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan.
(The airport, which gets daily casino-chartered flights and private aircraft, uses the old airfield's runways. August 6, 1945, 2:00 a.m., Tinian Island, the Central Pacific. "The people that were here had no idea what they were working on," says Sandy resident Jim Petersen, president of the Historic Wendover Airfield Foundation and director of aviation for Tooele County and Wendover Airport. Paul Tibbets, the 509th's commander - knew the truth about that mission in the months the airmen were assembling and testing components, and dropping 150 bomb prototypes over the West Desert and California's Salton Sea. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945. This atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, along with a second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Up to 17,000 trained at Wendover at its peak, dwarfing what had been a railroad stop on the edge of Utah's West Desert.įewer than 4,000 airmen were training here, though, by the time the unit that would become Wendover's most famous gathered in spring 1945 - the 509th Composite Group with a super-secret mission. This text accompanied the Smithsonian Institutions display, 'Enola Gay,' at the National Air and Space Museum commemorating the end of World War II and the role played by the B-29 aircraft, Enola Gay, that on Augcarried the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. It was delivered by the B-29 Enola Gay (on display at the Smithsonian. It carried an atomic bomb that was developed and tested.
Thousands of airmen learned to fly heavy bombers during World War II at Wendover Army Air Base, which was authorized by a Congress anticipating war and became a sprawling base with 668 buildings after the Dec. The Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, is seen on display July 29, 2020, at the Steven F. The Mk I bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare. B-29 bomber called the Enola Gay flew towards Hiroshima, Japan.