This page will tell you all about the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress,
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was the successor of the Boeing B-17 'Flying Fortress' (For more information on the B-17, see the respective post). The B-29 was a 4-engine propeller driven heavy bomber which was released during the end of World War II. Most of them were flown primararily by the United States of America. The plane was very advanced for its time, with pressurized cabins, electronic fire controls and remote-controlled guns.
|A B-29 Superfortress in flight|
Unlike many other WWII era bombers, the B-29 remained in service long after the war; it was finally retired in the 1960s. Some of them were even used as flying television transmitters!
Undoubtedly the most famous B-29 Superfortress was the Enola Gay
The Enola Gay
The Enola Gay was the bomber which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The plane was named after the mother of the pilot, Paul Tibbets. He picked the plane right of the assembly line. On 6th August, 1945, The Enola Gay dropped the bomb, code-named 'Little Man' on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It then served as a reconnaissance aircraft for the second bombing.
|A picture of the Enola Gay inside the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.|
After returning to the USA, it operated in several other nuclear drop tests, after which it was retired and sent to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1961, the whole plane was transferred to the Smithsonian storage facility in Maryland, and in the 1980s, a part of it was exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. In 2003, it was shifted to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Centre, and has remained there since.
Information taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay, but typed by me.