Fantastic account of from the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. On 30 August 1946, the title to the aircraft was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and the Enola Gay was removed from the USAAF inventory. Our picture will probably be all over the states before we can say anything. I was a bit sickened to read the story of the man who dropped the atomic bomb. The decision was made to preserve the Enola Gay, and on 24 July 1946, the aircraft was flown to DavisMonthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona, in preparation for storage. "When they let us write about it from here, I'll be able to tell you all about it. "It seems our crew and airplanes made history or something," he writes. There also is a handwritten missive that George Caron, the Enola Gay's tail gunner, penned to his wife upon returning from the successful mission. Rendell, who has amassed a considerable trove of Second World War-related artifacts for his museum, says he purchased the operations orders more than two decades ago from the family of Jacob Beser, a radar and electronics specialist who was the only man to have flown both bombing missions. That blast and its aftermath claimed another 80,000 lives, prompting Japan to surrender days later on Aug. Rendell established in 1999, also has a copy of a similarly non-descript order for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later on Aug.
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The operations order is a basic sequence of events for crew members on the nine planes involved in the bombing, from when to attend prayer services, rise from bed, eat meals, attend briefings and finally take flight for Japan. Under a section meant to describe what types of bombs the plane would be carrying, the order bears just one word: "special." The Enola Gay is listed only by its identification number, 82, and the last name of its pilot, Paul Tibbets. There's no direct mention of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb, or of the infamous bomb itself, codenamed "Little Boy." The simple, careworn document bears little indication of the importance of the mission. "The average person does not realize what one of these missions would be like. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. "To me, it's a glimpse into what went on that day," says Kenneth Rendell, founder of the private museum located in Boston. 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. The Hiroshima bombing and its aftermath ultimately claimed about 140,000 lives, helping to draw to a close the deadliest conflict in history and, for better or worse, usher in the atomic age. 6, 1945, is on display at the Museum of World War II as the 70th anniversary of the attack is marked Thursday. It's just a few cryptic notations on a badly yellowed sheet of paper, but it changed the course of world history.Īn original copy of the operations order for dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug.