She was then restored in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The big worry was whether the plane would blow up after the bomb detonated, he told Georgia Public Broadcasting. The NASM took control of the Enola Gay and moved her to Silver Hills, where she sat out of the public eye for years. Long Description Boeings B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated, propeller-driven, bomber to fly during World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments. pilot and aircraft commander Captain Robert A. A third B-29, The Great Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both missions. dropping of Little Boy Enola Gays crew on 6 August 1945, consisted of 12 men. He said the Hiroshima mission was relatively easy, with no anti-aircraft fire coming from the ground. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. It brought the first nuclear weapons used in the Pacific Theater war. The crew quarters are in the b29s pressurized compartments and the aircraft has highly developed armaments and avionics systems. He studied chemical engineering after the war and became an executive with DuPont. The B-29 Enola Gay is the most complicated and propeller-driven bomber aircraft in the Second World War. Paul Tibbets in front of the Enola GayUS Air Force photo) The Enola Gay Crew Airplane Crew Col. The Pennsylvania-born Van Kirk flew missions in Europe during the war and visited Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic blast there. front of the restored Enola Gay, shaking hands and receiving the high regard of visitors. Japan surrendered on August 15th, 1945, bringing World War Two to an end. Three days after the Hiroshima bombing, the United States dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” on Nagasaki. The death toll from the blast by the end of the year was estimated at about 140,000, out of the total of 350,000 who lived there at the time. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S. The US B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, carrying 12 crew members, dropped the atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, on Hiroshima in the closing days of World War Two. On August 6, 1945, this Martin-built B-29-45-MO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan. “The bomb really saved lives, in spite of the tremendous number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because the destruction that would have been caused in Japan otherwise would have been tremendous,” he said in an oral history for Georgia Public Broadcasting. He later told reporters that after seeing one atomic bomb explode in war, he never wanted to see another one used again.īut he defended the use of the bomb, describing it as the lesser of two evils when compared to the continued aerial assault of the Japanese main islands and a planned US invasion. Van Kirk was the navigator on the flight that dropped the first nuclear bomb used in warfare. Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay plane that dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has died at a retirement home in Georgia at age 93, media reports said.