Now displayed at the National Air and Space Museum, what was the name of the B-29, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, that dropped the first atomic bomb?
509th Bomb Wing had a single mission: to drop the atomic bomb. The group made history on 6 August 1945, when the B-29 Superfortress, "Enola Gay," piloted by Col Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The B-29 "Bockscar," piloted by Maj Charles Sweeney flew over the Japanese mainland on 9 August 1945, and dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The 509th Bomb Wing moved its people and equipment to Pease AFB, Portsmouth, NH. in August 1958. There, the wing continued to function as an integral part of SAC. By 1965, its B-47s for were scheduled for
Surrender of Japan Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped an atomic bomb (code-named Little Boy by the U.S.) on the city of Hiroshima in southwest Honshū. Throughout the day, confused reports reached Tokyo that Hiroshima had been the target of an air raid, which had leveled the city with a "blinding flash and violent blast". Later that day, they received U.S. President Truman's broadcast announcing the first use of an atomic bomb, and promising: The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood enough to know how very difficult building it