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#Does the smithsonian have the enola gay serial numbers
The Enola Gay and other 509 th bombers also had the last two digits of their serial numbers painted on the nose and on the fuselage near the tail. “The use of a square-P as a tail marking entailed painting a black square leaving a white P in the center of the square,” he writes. Krauss notes that while three B-29s of the 509 th did have a square-P tail mark (which stood for the 39 th Bomb Group, 314 th Wing, North Field, Guam) while on Tinian, the Enola Gay was not among them. The Enola Gay tail marking was changed from the circle-arrow to circle-R, which was the marking for the 6 th Bomb Group, 313 th Wing, North Field, Tinian.” The tail markings of other Marianas-based bomb groups (which used letters) were substituted prior to August 6 to avoid easy recognition of 509 th planes. He writes: “The original tail markings of 509 th B-29s was a forward-pointing arrow in a circle. It was part of a ruse, according to Krauss. Which is correct?”įor the answer, we turned to Robert Krauss, historian for the 509 th Composite Group, the unit that carried out the nuclear bombing missions at the end of WWII.
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The three are: a black letter P, a circle-R, and a circle-arrow. Harris says he has three pictures of the bomber on Tinian island in the Northern Marianas (its takeoff point for the bomb run), and “in each of the pictures, it has a different fin flash on the vertical stabilizer. Stan Harris of Brighton, Colorado, writes with a question about the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Udvar-Hazy Center, but before the museum opened. In 2004 the Department of Energy repaired and repainted the artifact at its Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.Ĭlick here to return to the World War II Gallery.The Enola Gay in 2003, shortly after moving to the Steven F. When constructed in 1945, the "Little Boy" on display was an operational weapon, but it has been completely demilitarized for display purposes. Weighing about 9,000 pounds, it produced an explosive force equal to 20,000 tons of TNT.
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The result of the Manhattan Project, begun in June 1942, "Little Boy" was a gun-type weapon, which detonated by firing one mass of uranium down a cylinder into another mass to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction.
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The bomber remained at Andrews in outdoor storage until August 1960. The airplane's last flight ended on December 2 when the Enola Gay touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. It was delivered by the B-29 Enola Gay (on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum), it detonated at an altitude of 1,800 feet over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. Although in Smithsonian custody, the aircraft remained stored at Pyote Air Force Base, Texas, between January 1952 and December 1953. The Mk I bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare.