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Thomas Ferebee dropped Little Boy - a 10,000 pound, uranium-enriched bomb - which detonated 1,800 feet above the city’s center. Around 8:15 a.m., on a calm, sunny morning, bombardier Maj. 6, 1945, the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima, an important Japanese military center. “Lewis himself was bumped from command pilot to copilot.” “There was some animosity between, because … a lot of Lewis’ crew was bumped,” Kinney said. The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, Japan, after the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb in combat on Aug. He handpicked the plane the night before the mission, to the surprise of its crew, and had his mother’s name - Enola Gay - painted on its side. Paul Tibbets Jr., the commander of the 509th. But Lewis would not end up leading the atomic mission.
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Robert Lewis, of the 509th Composite Group, from the factory to New Mexico, then to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, where its crew practiced flight maneuvers, loading the massive bomb and dropping it. 82 then, was flown by Army Air Forces Capt. Only the tail gun position was left to defend it from enemies. The remote-controlled gun turrets were also taken away to increase speed. “You have a 10,000 pound atomic bomb you have to carry, so you have to lighten the airplane.” Jeremy Kinney, the Air and Space Museum’s curator of American military aviation, 1919-1945. “All of the armor that protects the crew was removed to save weight,” said Dr. The famous B-29 Superfortress rolled off the Glenn Martin assembly line in the spring of 1945 with what was known as a “silverplate modification” specifically for the atomic mission.
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It’s a plane with a huge, controversial, world-changing story to tell. Seventy-five years ago, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, bringing an end to a long and devastating World War II and making the Enola Gay, the B-29 that delivered it, one of the most famous in history.