1945: Flying the “Enola Gay” B-29 from Tinian Island, Col Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, Japan. The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. Enola Gay participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki, a secondary target, being bombed instead.
