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Enola Gay

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and NagasakiBoeing B-29 SuperfortressIndividual aircraft in the collection of the Smithsonian InstitutionIndividual aircraft of World War II
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Tibbets wave

The Enola Gay () is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused the destruction of about three quarters of the city. Enola Gay participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki, a secondary target, being bombed instead. After the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. In May 1946, 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. Later that year, it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and spent many years parked at air bases exposed to the weather and souvenir hunters, before its 1961 disassembly and storage at a Smithsonian facility in Suitland, Maryland. In the 1980s, veterans groups engaged in a call for the Smithsonian to put the aircraft on display, leading to an acrimonious debate about exhibiting the aircraft without a proper historical context. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the National Mall, for the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid controversy. Since 2003, the entire restored B-29 has been on display at NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The last survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Enola Gay (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Enola Gay
Air and Space Museum Parkway,

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

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N 38.9108 ° E -77.4442 °
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Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

Air and Space Museum Parkway 14390
20151
Virginia, United States
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Phone number
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

call+17035724118

Website
airandspace.si.edu

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Nearby Places

Willard, Virginia
Willard, Virginia

Willard (also known as Willard Crossroads) was an unincorporated community located in what is now a part of Washington Dulles International Airport in the U.S. state of Virginia. The village was named after Joseph Edward Willard, a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly from 1893 to 1901, then Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Although Willard lived in Loudoun County, he represented Fairfax County, because the village was only 1,500 feet (460 meters) from the county border. Willard owned a 50-acre (20-hectare) estate in Fairfax. His father was Joseph Clapp Willard, the owner of the famed Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. Willard was at the intersection of Willard Road (now Stonecroft Boulevard) and Sterling Road (now Horsepen Road), surrounded by extensive farmland, housing, schools, places of worship, the Willard store (until 1907), and Blue Ridge Airfield (1938–1951). Willard stood west of Floris, north of Pleasant Valley, and south of Farmwell (now Ashburn). Willard was regarded as a crossroads and a distinctive community until construction of Washington Dulles International Airport began in 1958. Approximately 26 square miles (67 square kilometers) of Virginia land from Willard, Chantilly, Pleasant Valley, Sterling, and Ashburn was bought for construction. By the airport's completion, all remains of civilization before 1958 on this land had virtually disappeared, except a stretch of Willard Rd (used as a service road), and three storage outbuildings between Runways 1C/19C and 1R/19L.