Wendover enola gay

Lt. So Tibbets trained the crews to take a sharp, diving 158-degree turn away from the target once the bomb was released, putting maximum distance between the plane and the detonation.

On June 14, 1945, Captain Robert Lewis picked up plane 44-86292 from the Martin Company assembly plant in Omaha, Nebr., and flew it to Wendover.

For this mission, Lewis would move to the co-pilot’s seat.

Just hours before takeoff, Tibbets summoned a crew to paint his mother’s name, Enola Gay, on the side of the cockpit. However, the B-29 “Enola Gay” hangar and most of the other important World War II structures are in a critical state of disrepair. No one was told the full extent of their mission, and they were not to talk about it to anyone, including spouses and other military personnel. 

Like most incoming soldiers, Joe Badali’s first interview at the base was with an FBI agent, who informed Badali that the agency had investigated him so thoroughly as to have paid visits to his schools and neighbors back home.

Fat Man was slightly longer and 500 pounds heavier, with a bulbous, five-foot diameter housing that gave it its name. “I’m sure he picked up a lot of gossip there.”

When Morris “Dick” Jeppson arrived at the base in late 1944, he quickly realized that his stay would be anything but ordinary. In 1941 Army Air Corps Gen.

Henry H. Arnold set about diversifying military resources far into the nation’s interior and away from the reach of the Japanese Navy. Joe turned to Steven Gregg, a fellow soldier transferred from Delaware, and said, “They took us from heaven and sent us to hell.”

Hell, as it turned out, was an ideal place to test the men and machinery that would execute one of the 20th Century’s defining moments: the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in World War II.

During a frenzied 10-month period beginning in late 1944, Utah’s remote West Desert was on the leading edge of the atomic arms race, as crews put the finishing touches on the world’s first nuclear weapon and the plane that would carry it into battle.

Can you keep a secret?

In the fall of 1944, the Army Air Force (AAF) put 29-year-old Lt.

Col. Paul Tibbets in command of the newly formed 509th Composite Group. The 509th was a completely self-sufficient unit of nearly 1,800 airmen, machinists, engineers and scientists charged with carrying the atomic bomb to the enemy. He was also a military test pilot for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the plane the AAF chose for the atomic missions.

Army brass offered Tibbets the choice of three bases for the 509th, but he never even made it to the other two; one look at Wendover and he was sold.

The Enola Gay left Wendover for the Pacific island of Tinian on June 27, 1945. Yes or no?’ I said, ‘Yes sir!’ ”

All told, roughly 400 FBI agents kept an eye on the men stationed in Wendover, camouflaged as workers, military personnel and civilians. “But we never talked about it.”

Neither did Joe Badali, although he knew better than most what was going on.

From my training, I realized that that was reflected shockwave from the ground, which proved that the bomb had, in fact, detonated at somewhere near the desired elevation above
the ground.”

Three days later, Major Charles Sweeney of the 509th piloted the B-29 Bockscar to Nagasaki, dropping the Fat Man bomb. Tibbets was already an accomplished pilot, having flown combat missions in Europe and North Africa.

“And he says, ‘This here is an atom bomb. It also had easy air access to California’s Salton Sea, where test bombs could be dropped.

But the airfield’s primary asset was its isolation. The air base on Utah’s western border had a large airstrip, barracks, hangars and other support buildings built by conventional bomber groups starting in 1940.