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. Tibbets, Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. Crew of the Enola Gay, the infamous B-29 plane from which the first atom bomb was dropped. Paul Tibbets standing in front of the B-29 Enola Gay, the plane he piloted to Hiroshima and dropped the world's first atomic bomb on 5 August 1945. Enola Gay Boeing B-29 on 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The atomic bomb named 'Little Boy' was dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, at 8:15 in the morning of August 6, 1945. 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. 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. Browse 306 enola gay stock photos and images available or search for space museum to find more great stock photos and pictures. The delivery system for these bombs, the Superfortress, represented the latest. Another atomic attack on Nagasaki followed three days later. 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. On August 6, 1945, the crew of a modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare, called Little Boy, on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. 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.