Three days later it flew again, this time towards Nagasaki, supporting the second atomic bomb drop with weather reconnaissance. This was the bomber's thirteenth mission and third combat mission, following raids on Kobe and Nagoya during the last eight days of July. By the time it returned at 1458 local time, the world had changed. He gave it the name and had it painted on the plane before taking off from Tinian Island in the Marianas at 0245 local time amidst a media circus.
Tibbets as a tribute for her support of his becoming an aviator.
The plane was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of the bomber's captain, Col. Įngines: Four 2200 HP Wright Cyclone R-3350īuilt at the Martin plant in Omaha, Nebraska, delivered and personally selected by Tibbets. Enola Gay was the name of the specially modified B-29 US Army Air Force long-range bomber of the 509th Composite Group that dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the morning of.
