Enola Gay is the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped "Little Boy", the first atomic bomb ever used in war, when the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) attacked Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945, just before the end of World War II. Because of its roles in the atomic bombings of Japan, its name has been synonymous with the bombings themselves. It was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot.
On August 5, 1945, during preparation for the first atomic mission, Tibbets had the plane named after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets (1893–1983, who had been named for the heroine of a novel). According to Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts (Enola Gay, Stein & Day Pub, 1977), regularly assigned aircraft commander Robert Lewis was unhappy to be displaced by Tibbets for the important mission, and furious when he arrived at the aircraft on the morning of 6 August to see it painted with the now-famous nose art. Tibbets himself, interviewed on Tinian later that day by war correspondents, confessed that he was a bit embarrassed at having attached his mother's name to such a fateful mission.
The Hiroshima mission has been described as tactically flawless, and Enola Gay returned safely to its base on Tinian to great fanfare on the base.
No comments:
Post a Comment