It was flown to Kwajalein for the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki being bombed instead.Īfter the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. The bomb, code-named ' Little Boy', was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused unprecedented destruction. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. 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. National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Enola GayĬolonel Paul Tibbets waving from the Enola Gay's cockpit to get reporters to stand clear of the propellers prior to engine start, before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima
