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While there I drove my rental car to the ferry docks so I could make the 5-mile voyage to the Tinian Island. I was able to see clearly the bomb bay doors from which the bomb was released.ĭuring my visit to Guam in 2010, I took a short flight to Saipan which itself played a significant role in World War II. The aircraft rests on a stand that lifts in about eight feet above floor level. When it was placed on public display in 2003, more than 300,000 staff hours had been invested in its restoration. The aircraft is in pristine condition, having been faithfully restored by work that began in 1984. The Enola Gay, only 99 feet in length, was named by its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. I had imagined that it would be much larger than it actually is given the impact its cargo has had upon the course of human history. When I approached the Enola Gay I was struck by its size. This huge aviation center is the largest such museum in the world, and I had an opportunity to go there while I was visiting with family in Annadale. Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles Airport in Virginia. The B-29 that delivered the atomic bomb to Hiroshima, the Enola Gay, is on display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Today, Part 2 will look at the museum where the Enola Gay is on display, the airfield on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas where that aircraft departed on its flight to Japan, and Peace Park in Hiroshima that marks the spot where the bomb was detonated. Part 1, published August 25, examined Los Alamos where the A-Bomb was perfected and the Trinity Site where it was tested. He reportedly said when he witnessed the initial test at Trinity: ‘We knew the world would not be the same. Robert Oppenheimer known as the ‘father’ of the A-Bomb. Here, in this quiet ‘peace park,’ I found my mind returning to those haunting words spoken by J. The dome seen in the center of this picture–just above my left shoulder–is where the first chapter in a yet unfinished account of ‘the use of nuclear weapons in warfare’ was written on August of 1945. Mills writes: “My visits to the key sites where the A-Bomb was perfected at Los Alamos to the place, half-way around the world, where it was first deployed in warfare, has been, for me, a sobering journey.
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He ranks as one of the giants of World War II leadership but was overshadowed by more celebrated military figures.Dr. In this second video, Tibbets explains some of the details of the weapon and in this more expansive interview from the Atomic Heritage, he further explains the arc of his impressive career. He had to devise from scratch the means to deploy the new weapon and assemble and train the units to do it, all under an airtight shroud of security with little or no guidance from command, since command knew less than he did about the requirements.
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Silver Plate was the code name for developmental work on bomb delivery and it gave Tibbets a blank check for acquiring men and equipment. He was assigned to what became known as Project Silver Plate in September 1944, less than a year before the bomb was first deployed. At the time of that assignment, he was unaware of the Manhattan project nor that a super weapon was under development. Jimmy Doolittle and he was ordered to return to the U.S. His competence and leadership skills caught the attention of Gen. Patton’s personal pilot earlier in the war. Tibbets was assigned to Wichita to help get the airplane back on track.Īlthough he doesn’t mention it in this video, by early 1943, Tibbets had already accumulated 25 combat missions in Europe and had been Gen. The airplane represented the most expensive development program during World War II-yes, more expensive than the Manhattan project-and Boeing was having such difficulty completing it for volume manufacture that it wanted out of the program.
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As he describes in this video produced by aviation historian and collector Kermit Weeks, even as late as 1943, the B-29 program was in serious trouble. Most of us do not know that in addition to overseeing the Hiroshima mission, Tibbets, then a 28-year-old colonel, was also instrumental in saving the B-29 program.