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ENOLA GAY
B-29

Manufacturer: Boeing Aircraft Company
Assembler: Glenn L. Martin Company, Omaha, Nebraska
AAF Serial Number: 44-86292
Engine: Four Wright R-3350-57 Cyclone
Horsepower: 2,200 hp/engine
Wingspan: 141 ft. 3 in.
Height: 29 ft. 7 in.
Weight: #70,140 empty
Propellers: Curtiss Electric four-blade 16 ft. 7 in.
Maximum Speed: 360 mph (576 km/h) at 25,000 ft.
Stalling Speed: 125 mph
Range: 3,250 miles Loaded
Crew: 12 (usually 10)
Armament: 20,000 bomb (other B29s were equipped with 10 machine guns and a 1x20 mm cannon)

The B-29 Superfortress bomber was the single most complicated and expensive weapon produced by the United States during World War II. Nearly 4,000 B-29s were built for combat in the Pacific theater, including the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima. Assembled on a rush basis by a vast manufacturing program that involved hundreds of thousands of workers, the B-29 boosted the Allies' wartime fortunes as it transformed the economies of cities and towns from Seattle, Washington, to Marietta, Georgia, and from Wichita, Kansas, to Woodridge, New Jersey.

ENOLA GAY
Chronology

Serial Number B-29-45-MO-44-86292 Victor 12 or 82

Shown below are the key dates in the history of the Enola Gay, the B-29 SuperFortress commanded by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets that dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. The references used in compiling this chronology are shown at the end. Dates given are based on the local time zone.

9 May 45 B-2945-MO 44-86292 selected by Colonel Tibbets at the Martin Omaha plant in Omaha, Nebraska.

18 May 45 Delivered to the U.S. Army Air Forces by the Glenn L. Martin Company at the Martin Omaha plant.

14 Jun 45 Flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, by Robert Lewis and crew.

27 Jun 45 Departed Wendover for Tinian (commanded by Lewis with crew).

2 Jul 45 Arrived at North Field, Tinian.

7 Jul 45 Practice bombing mission (500 lb, bombs) to Marcus Island (Opns Order #9, Ralph Devore as airplane commander with crew.)

12 Jul 45 Practice bombing mission (1,000 lb. bombs) to Rota Island (Opns Order #14, Jim Price as airplane commander with crew).

17 Jul 45 Training mission (Opns Order #16, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

18 Ju1 45 Night orientation mission (Opns Order #17, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

19 Jul 45 Practice bombing mission (1,000 lb. bombs) to Guguan Island (Opns Order #18, Lewis as airplane Commander with crew).

21 Jul 45 Practice bombing mission (500 lb. bombs) to Marcus Island (Opns Order #21, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

22 Jul 45 Practice bombing mission (1,000 lb. bombs) to unknown target (Opns Order #22, McKnight as airplane commander with crew).

24 Jul 45 Combat bombing mission (#6) with pumpkin bomb, target: Kobe Steel Works (Opns Order #24, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

26 Jul 45 Combat bombing mission (#9) with pumpkin bomb, target: Nagoya urban area (Opns Order #27, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

31 Ju1 45 Little Boy (L6) atomic bomb drop test mission (Opns Order #31, Tibbets as airplane commander with modified crew ).

5 Aug 45 Little Boy (Ll1) atomic bomb loaded in front bomb bay. Name Enola Gay painted on nose.

6 Aug 45 Special bombing mission (#13) with Little Boy atomic-bomb (Lll), target: Hiroshirna (Opns Order #35, Tibbets as airplane commander with modified crew)

9 Aug 45 Advance weather reconnaissance to Kokura in support of Fat Man atomic bombing mission to Nagasaki (Special Bombing Mission #16)(Opns Order #39, George Marquardt as airplane commander with crew).

20 Aug 45 Local mission (purpose unknown) (Opns Order #47, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

22 Aug 45 Local mission (purpose unknown) (Opns Order #48, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

4 Nov 45 Departed Tinian for United States.

8 Nov 45 Arrived Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico.

Mar 46 Assigned to Task Force t.5 for Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests.

18 Apr 46 Departed Roswell AAF for Operation Crossroads atomic bomb tests.

1 May 46 Arrived Kwajalein Island.

1 July 46 Departed Kwajalein for United States.

2 July 46 Arrived Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Field, California.

24 July 46 To Davis-Monthan Army Air Field, Arizona (4105th Base Unit) in preparation for storage.

30 Aug 46 Placed in storage at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field and dropped from Army Air Forces inventory.

3 Jul 49 Retrieved from storage and flown to Park Ridge, Illinois, (now O`Hare airport) by Paul Tibbets; accepted by Smithsonian Institution for restoration and display. Stored at Park Ridge.

12 Jan 52 Flown to Pyote Air Force Base, Texas, for temporary storage.

2 Dec 53 Flown to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, for temporary storage.

10 Aug 60 Disassembly started in preparation For transfer to Smithsonian storage and restoration facility at Suitland, Maryland.

21 Jul 61 Disassembled components moved to Suitland.

5 Dec 84 Restoration started at Garber facility, Suitland, Maryland.

28 Jun 95 Forward section of the Fuselage and other pieces of Enola Gay put on display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

18 May 98 Enola Gay exhibit closed and pieces returned to the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility In Suitland, Maryland.

-- Compiled by:
Col. Richard H. Campbell (USAF, Ret.)

Veterans for Constitution Restoration is a non-profit, non-partisan educational and grassroots activist organization. The primary area of concern to all VetsCoR members is that our national and local educational systems fall short in teaching students and all American citizens the history and underlying principles on which our Constitutional republic-based system of self-government was founded. VetsCoR members are also very concerned that the Federal government long ago over-stepped its limited authority as clearly specified in the United States Constitution, as well as the Founding Fathers' supporting letters, essays, and other public documents.

Actively seeking volunteers to provide this valuable service to Veterans and their families.

Tribute to a Generation - The memorial will be dedicated on Saturday, May 29, 2004.

Thanks to CholeraJoe for providing this link.

Iraq Homecoming Tips

~ Thanks to our Veterans still serving, at home and abroad. ~ Freepmail to Ragtime Cowgirl | 2/09/04 | FRiend in the USAF

PDN members and fans. We hope you will consider this simple act of patriotism worth passing on or taking up as a project in your own back yard. In summary:

Who They Are: Operation: Stitches Of Love was started by the Mothers of two United States Marines stationed in Iraq.

What They Are Doing: We are gathering 12.5"x12.5" quilt squares from across the country and assembling the largest quilt ever produced. When completed we will take the quilt from state to state and gather even more squares.

Why They Are Doing This: We are building this quilt to rally support for the Coalition Forces in Iraq and to show the service members that they are not forgotten. We want the world to know Nothing will ever break the stitches that bind us together as a country.

Ideas to start a local project:

Obtain enough Red, White and Blue material (cloth) for a 12.5 x 12.5 quilt square.
If you have someone in your family that sews, make it a weekend project and invite neighbors to join you.

Consider this tribute as a project for your civic group, scouts, church or townhall group.

Locate an elementary school with an after school program in your neighborhood or locate an after school program in your neighborhood not attached to a school and ask if you could volunteer one or two afternoons and create some squares with the kids.

Invite some VFW posts to share your project in honor of their post.

Send us webmaster@patriotwatch.com for digital photos of in progress and finished project for various websites, OIFII.com and the media.

PDN is making this appeal in support of Operation: Stitches Of Love
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The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul

Click on Hagar for
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I didn't know what a pumpkin bomb was, so I caught these snippets from various history sites:

24 Jul 45 Combat bombing mission (#6) with pumpkin bomb, target: Kobe Steel Works (Opns Order #24, Lewis as airplane commander with crew).

~ snip ~Unlike other B-29 bombing units, the group dropped 10,000-pound mock atomic bombs called pumpkin bombs across Japan before unleashing the real ones. The pumpkin bombs were used in rehearsals to familiarize crews with flight routes and confirm targets. To maximize the power of the atomic bombs, planned targets were omitted from the conventional bombing list.

~ snip ~The 509th CG was sent to Wendover Field in a remote part of the Utah desert for training. Wendover had a civilian population of 107 until the 509th arrived with a military population of 1,767. Equipped with the specially modified B-29s, the 509th crews practiced precision bombing at Wendover Field with dummy "pumpkin" bombs in preparation for the development of a new secret weapon. The dummy bombs were Fat Man-type bombs which contained no atomic components.

~ snip ~The crews of the 509th had trained together for almost a year under top-secret conditions. They had first gathered at Wendover Field, an isolated base in western Utah, and then had flown individual long-range, over-water navigation missions from Batista Field, Cuba. The personnel of the 509th moved to Tinian by air and sea in late May and early June 1945, where their top-secret status was the subject of much curiosity and constant ribbing. The crews designated for the atomic missions practiced by dropping giant 10,000-pound "pumpkins" on 12 Japanese targets. Each pumpkin contained 5,500 pounds of explosives.

The B-29s of the 509th had been modified to deliver the atomic bomb and were thus unable to carry conventional bombs. Instead, they carried the pumpkins, painted orange and shaped like Fat Man. The pumpkins also had been used during their Stateside training. Proximity fuses that produced an air burst, a feature of the atomic bombs, were installed. About 45 of the pumpkin bombs had been brought from the States. According to Tibbets, his crews were so accurate with them that Maj. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, then commanding the Twentieth Air Force, ordered 100 more.

That 10,000 lb bomb may have been the biggest in existence at the time. It may have created a mushroom fireball on its own, as many big bombs do.

The Enola Gay should be completely reconditioned to flyability, loaded with an exact duplicate of Little Boy, and flown over San Francisco on Gay Pride Day--I'm proud of the Enola Gay and the important contribution it made--and cleaning out the bathhouses is a logical progression.

Hackworth didn't even pick up her purse to swing at my letter last night. "Steel" my Aunt Petunia.

Emergency Handle

One of these two men is the retired Chief Scientist of the Air Force we had the pleasure of working for off and on the past decade--and they do seem to have all the fun:

To better gauge the threat of nuclear proliferation, administrators at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory wanted to determine what it would it would take for a single-minded Nth country to build a bomb. The lab hired two newly-minted physicists, David Dobson and Robert Selden, with no access to or knowledge of classified information, to "produce a credible nuclear weapons design." Although Dobson and Selden lacked access to classified information, they knew, just as every would-be nuclear proliferant has known since August 1945, the most important nuclear "secret" of all: that it is possible to design and produce nuclear weapons. As Manhattan project director General Leslie Groves had testified in 1945, "the big secret … that the thing went off … told more to the world and to the physicists and scientists of the world than any other thing that could be told to them." (Note 3) The two scientists received "Q" clearances for nuclear weapons design information because any information that they developed on nuclear design would, under the law, be considered secret and "born classified." After three "man-years", the two physicists had produced a "credible" design for an implosion nuclear weapon that would be triggered by a plutonium pit. According to the articles, which are based on interviews with the participants, the experiment was a success. The amateur bomb designers learned that they had produced a plan for a device that, if constructed and tested, would have as much explosive force as the weapon that had devastated Hiroshima in August 1945.

Note: Professional bomb-builders on closed course. Do not attempt.

~~~

Surgeon General's Advisory: In the event of accidental poison ingestion, should the need to projectile vomit arise, obtain photo of Martin Sheen limboing his ex-alchy pot-belly under the police tape at the annual bleaters "peace" convention at Los Alamos--if video available featuring Sheen groaning his rendition of The Lord's Prayer, evacuate homes on each side, across the street, and advise FAA.

~~~

Twenty years ago going with the librarian met son of Robert Dude-Where's-My-Security-Clearance? Oppenheimer. The great one was Teller, rest his soul. Now the Wen Ho Lees, suffering low self-esteem, have the head of the PRC nuclear weapons program over for dinner.

Yankee Lady's number three engine, a Wright Cyclone R-1820-97 delivering around 1200 hp.

Just in: John Ferret Kerry a) served in the Vietnam War/protested the Vietnam War; b) earned/"earned" various medals; c) threw away/did not throw away his/someone's ribbons/medals; d) did/did not commit atrocities.