Colonel Paul Tibbets,

the pilot of the first plane

to drop an atomic bomb.

ENOLA GAY 82

ATOMIC CLASSIC

WHITE TEE SHIRT

ENOLA GAY

HIROSHIMA BOMBING

ENOLA GAY 82

ENOLA GAY B-29 CREW

"TITTER YE NOT"

******************

After the birth of his daughter Enola,

Olympic runner Tyson Gay has been barred from ever competing in Japan.

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What does Hiroshima in Japan and Khartoum in the Sudan have in common?

Nothing...yet

*****************

Americans are now saying the earthquake

in Japan is karma for Pearl Harbour.

I personally can't wait

for the karma waiting to happen for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

******************

Formulaic joke.............
U235(92)+n ->Ba142(56) + KR91(36) +3n+3.2^-11J

You might not get it,

but Hiroshima did in 1945!!

******************

ENOLA GAY 82 MERCHANDISE

Paul Tibbets

With Enola Gay

Little Boy Bomb

The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Super fortress bomber,

named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel

Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the

assembly line. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of

World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb.

The bomb, code-named " Little Boy ", was targeted at the city

of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused unprecedented destruction.

Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance

aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki

being bombed instead.

After the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from

Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. It was flown to Kwajalein for the Operation

Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at

Bikini Atoll . Later that year it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institution, and spent

many years parked at air bases exposed to the weather and souvenir hunters, before

being disassembled and transported to the Smithsonian's storage facility at Suitland,

Maryland, in 1961.

In the 1980s, veterans groups engaged in a call for the Smithsonian to put the aircraft on

display, leading to an acrimonious debate about exhibiting the aircraft without a proper

historical context. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the

National Air and Space Museum ( NASM ) in downtown Washington, D.C., for the

bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid a storm of controversy. Since 2003, the entire

restored B-29 has been on display at NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. The last

survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on July 28, 2014, at the age of 93.

The Enola Gay ( Model number B-29-45-MO, Serial number 44-86292, Victor number 82 ) was built by the Glenn L.Martin Company (now Lockheed Martin) at its Bellevue, Nebraska plant, located at what is now known as Offutt Air Force Base. The bomber was one of 15 B-29s with the "Silverplate" modifications necessary to deliver atomic weapons. These modifications included an extensively modified bomb bay with pneumatic doors and British bomb attachment and release systems, reversible pitch propellers that gave more braking power on landing, improved engines with fuel injection and better cooling and the removal of protective armour and gun turrets.

Enola Gay was personally selected by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., the commander of the 509th Composite Group, on 9

May 1945, while still on the assembly line. The aircraft was accepted by the United States Army Air Forces ( USAAF ) on 18 May 1945 and assigned to the 393d Bombardment Squadron, Heavy, 509th Composite Group. Crew B-9, commanded by Captain Robert A. Lewis, took delivery of the bomber and flew it from Omaha to the 509th's base at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, on 14 June 1945.

LITTLE BOY

BOMB DIAGRAM

Thirteen days later, the aircraft left Wendover for Guam, where it received a bomb-bay modification, and flew to North Field, Tinian, on 6 July. It was initially given the Victor (squadron-assigned identification) number 12, but on 1 August, was given the circle R tail markings of the 6th Bombardment Group as a security measure and had its Victor number changed

to 82 to avoid misidentification with actual 6th Bombardment Group aircraft. During July, the bomber made eight practice or training flights, and flew two missions, on 24 and 26 July, to drop pumpkin bombs on industrial targets at Kobe and Nagoya.

Enola Gay was used on 31 July on a rehearsal flight for the actual mission.

The partially assembled Little Boy gun-type nuclear weapon L-11

was contained inside a 41-inch (100 cm) x 47-inch (120 cm) x 138-

inch (350 cm) wooden crate weighing 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg)

that was secured to the deck of the USS Indianapolis. Unlike the

six Uranium-235 target discs, which were later flown to Tinian on

three separate aircraft arriving 28 and 29 July, the assembled

projectile with the nine Uranium-235 rings installed was shipped in

a single lead-lined steel container weighing 300 pounds (140 kg)

that was securely locked to brackets welded to the deck of Captain

Charles B. McVay III's quarters. Both the L-11 and projectile were

dropped off at Tinian on 26 July 1945. On 5 August 1945, during

preparation for the first atomic mission, Tibbets assumed command

of the aircraft and named it after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets,

who had herself been named for the heroine of a novel. When it came to selecting a name for the plane, Tibbets later recalled that:

my thoughts turned at this point to my courageous red-haired mother, whose quiet confidence had been a source of strength to me since boyhood, and particularly during the soul-searching period when I decided to give up a medical career to become a military pilot. At a time when Dad had thought I had lost my marbles, she had taken my side and said, "I know you will be alright son."

The name was painted on the aircraft on 5 August by Allan L. Karl, an enlisted man in the 509th. Regularly assigned aircraft commander Robert Lewis was unhappy to be displaced by Tibbets for this important mission, and became furious when he arrived at the aircraft on the morning of 6 August to see it painted with the now-famous nose art. Hiroshima was the primary target of the first nuclear bombing mission on 6 August, with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. Enola Gay, piloted by Tibbets, took off from North Field, in the Mariana Islands, about six hours' flight time from Japan, accompanied by two other B-29s, The Great Artiste, carrying instrumentation, and a then-nameless aircraft later called Necessary Evil , commanded by Captain George Marquardt, to take photographs. The director of the Manhattan Project, Major General

Leslie R. Groves, Jr., wanted the event recorded for posterity, so the take off was illuminated by floodlights. When he wanted to taxi, Tibbets leaned out the window to direct the bystanders out of the way. On request, he gave a friendly wave for the cameras.

After leaving Tinian , the aircraft made their way separately to Iwo Jima, where they rendezvoused at 2,440 meters (8,010 ft) and set course for Japan. The aircraft arrived over the target in clear visibility at 9,855 meters (32,333 ft). Captain William S. "Deak" Parsons of Project Alberta, who was in command of the mission, armed the bomb during the flight to minimize the risks during take off. His assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, removed the safety devices 30 minutes before reaching the target area.

A view of Hachobori Street in Hiroshima,

some time after the atomic bomb

was dropped on the city.

The release at 08:15 Hiroshima time went as

planned, and the Little Boy took 43 seconds to fall

from the aircraft flying at 31,060 feet (9,470 m) to the

predetermined detonation height about 1,968 feet

(600m) above the city. Enola Gay travelled 11.5 miles

(18.5 km) before it felt the shock waves from the

blast. Although buffeted by the shock, neither Enola

Gay nor The Great Artiste was damaged.

The detonation created a blast equivalent to 16

kilotons of TNT (67 TJ). The U-235 weapon was

considered very inefficient, with only 1.7% of its fissile

material fissioning. The radius of total destruction

was about one mile (1.6 km), with resulting fires

across 4.4 square miles (11 km2). The Americans

estimated that 4.7 square miles (12 km2) of the city

were destroyed. Japanese officials determined that

69% of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and

another 6–7% damaged. Some 70,000–80,000

people, or some 30% of the city's population, were

killed by the blast and resultant firestorm, and another

70,000 injured. Out of those killed, 20,000 were

soldiers.

Enola Gay returned safely to its base on Tinian to great fanfare,

touching down at 2:58 pm, after 12 hours 13 minutes. The Great

Artiste and Necessary Evil followed at short intervals. Several hundred people,

including journalists and photographers, had gathered to watch the planes return.

Tibbets was the first to disembark, and was presented with the Distinguished

Service Cross on the spot.

ENOLA GAY HIROSHIMA CREW

Bombardier Thomas Ferebee with the Norden Bombsight on Tinian after the

dropping of Little Boy Enola Gay's crew on 6 August 1945, consisted of 12 men.

The crew was:

Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. – pilot and aircraft commander

Captain Robert A. Lewis – co-pilot; Enola Gay's regularly assigned aircraft

commander

Major Thomas Ferebee – bombardier

Captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk – navigator

Captain William S. Parsons, USN – weaponeer and mission commander

First Lieutenant Jacob Beser – radar countermeasures

Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson – assistant weaponeer

Technical Sergeant George R. "Bob" Caron – tail gunner

Technical Sergeant Wyatt E. Duzenbury – flight engineer

Sergeant Joe S. Stiborik – radar operator

Sergeant Robert H. Shumard – assistant flight engineer

Private First Class Richard H. Nelson – VHF radio operator

Of mission commander Parsons, it was said:

"There is no one more responsible for

getting this bomb out of the laboratory and into some form useful for combat operations than Captain Parsons, by his plain genius in the ordnance business."

ENOLA GAY TIBBETS

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ "Enola Gay" is an anti war song by the British synth pop group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark ( OMD ). It was the only single from the band's 1980 album, Organisation.

Written by Andy McCluskey, it addresses the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, and directly mentions three components of the attack:

the 1 Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, which dropped the nuclear weapon 2 Little Boy 3 Hiroshima at "8:15".

"Enola Gay" has come to be regarded as one of the great pop songs. Critic Ned Raggett in All Music lauded the track as "astounding...a flat-out pop classic – clever, heartfelt, thrilling, and confident, not to mention catchy and arranged brilliantly"; colleague Dave Thompson called it a "perfect synth-dance-pop extravaganza." It featured in Music Radar's "The 40 Greatest Synth Tracks Ever" in 2009, who noted that the song "includes some of the biggest synth hooks of all time." In 2012, NME listed the track among the "100 Best Songs of the 1980s", describing McCluskey's vocal as "brilliantly quizzical" and the song as a "pop classic". It was selected by the BBC for use during the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

ENOLA GAY

OMD

ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES

IN THE DARK

When released as a single, "Enola Gay", was misperceived by listeners with little knowledge of the Hiroshima bombing as a cryptic identification of the band as homosexual; the track was banned from being played on popular BBC1 programme

Swap Shop for fear that it would serve as a corrupting sexual influence on children . Nevertheless, it was an enormous success, going on to sell more than 5 million copies internationally. The song was a hit in many countries, topping the charts in France, Italy and Portugal. It was a sleeper hit in OMD's native UK:

the track entered the UK Singles Chart at number 35, but climbed 27 places over the next 3 weeks to reach a peak of number 8, thus becoming the group's first Top 10 hit in their home country.

The lyrics to the song reflect on the decision to use the bomb and ask the listener to consider whether the bombings were necessary ("It shouldn't ever have to end this way"). The phrase, "Is mother proud of Little Boy today?", is an allusion to both the nickname of the uranium bomb, as well as the fact that pilot Paul Tibbets named the aircraft after his mother. The phrase, "It's 8:15, and that's the time that it's always been", refers to the time of detonation over Hiroshima at 8:15 am JST; as many timepieces were 'frozen' by the effects of the blast, it becomes 'the time that it's always been'. The song was also released during controversy surrounding the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's decision to allow US nuclear missiles to be stationed in Britain.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

“I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it, and have it work as perfectly as it did...

I sleep clearly every night.”
―Col Paul Tibbets

On 6 November 1945, Lewis flew the Enola Gay back to the United States, arriving at the 509th's new base at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico, on 8 November. On 29 April 1946, Enola Gay left Roswell as part of Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific. It flew to Kwajalein on 1 May. It was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll and left Kwajalein on 1 July, the date of the test, reaching Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Field, California, the next day.

The decision was made to preserve the Enola Gay, and on 24 July 1946, the aircraft was flown to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, in preparation for storage. On 30 August 1946, the title to the aircraft was transferred to the Smithsonian

Institution and the Enola Gay was removed from the USAAF inventory. From 1946 to 1961, the Enola Gay was put into temporary storage at a number of locations. It was at Davis-Monthan from 1 September 1946 until 3 July 1949, when it was flown to Orchard Place Air Field Park Ridge, Illinois, by Tibbets for acceptance by the Smithsonian. It was moved to Pyote Air Force Base, Texas, on 12 January 1952, and then to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on 2 December 1953, because

the Smithsonian had no storage space for the aircraft.

It was hoped that the Air Force would guard the plane but, lacking hangar space, it was left outdoors on a remote part of the air base, exposed to the elements. Souvenir hunters broke in and removed parts. Insects and birds then gained access to the aircraft. Paul E. Garber, the first head of the National Air Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, became concerned about the Enola Gay 's condition, and on 10 August 1960, Smithsonian staff began dismantling the aircraft. The components were transported to the Smithsonian storage facility at Suitland, Maryland, on 21 July 1961. Enola Gay remained at Suitland for many years. By the early 1980s, two veterans of the 509th, Don Rehl and his former navigator in the 509th, Frank B. Stewart, began lobbying for the aircraft to be restored and put on display. They enlisted Tibbets and Senator Barry Goldwater in their campaign. In 1983, Walter Boyne, a former B-52 pilot with the Strategic Air Command , became director of the National Air and Space Museum, and he made the Enola Gay 's restoration a priority. Looking at the aircraft, Tibbets recalled, was a "sad meeting. My fond memories, and I don't mean the dropping of the bomb, were the numerous occasions I flew the airplane.... I pushed it very, very hard and it never failed me.... It was probably the most beautiful piece of machinery that any pilot ever flew."

Restoration of the bomber began on 5 December 1984, at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration,and Storage

Facility in Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland. The propellers that were used on the bombing mission were later shipped to Texas A&M University. One of these propellers was trimmed to 12.5 feet (3.8 m) for use in the university's Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel. The lightweight aluminium variable-pitch propeller is powered by a 1,250 kVA electric motor providing a wind speed up to 200 miles per hour (320 km/h). Two engines were rebuilt at Garber and two at San Diego Air & Space Museum. The work was slow and meticulous. Every component was carefully cleaned. Some parts and instruments had been removed and could not be located. Replacements were found or fabricated, and marked so that future curators could distinguish them from the original components.

Enola Gay became the center of a controversy at the Smithsonian Institution when the museum planned to put its fuselage on public display in 1995 as part of an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The exhibit, The Crossroads:

The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, was drafted by the Smithsonian's

National Air and Space Museum staff, and arranged around the restored Enola Gay. Critics of the planned exhibit, especially those of the American Legion and the Air Force Association, charged that the exhibit focused too much attention on the Japanese casualties inflicted by the nuclear bomb, rather than on the motivations for the bombing or the discussion of the bomb's role in ending the conflict with Japan. The exhibit brought to national attention many long standing academic and political issues related to retrospective views of the bombings. As a result, after various failed attempts to revise the exhibit in order to meet the satisfaction of competing interest groups, the exhibit was canceled on 30 January 1995. Martin O. Harwit , Director of the National Air and Space Museum, was compelled to resign over the controversy.

The forward fuselage did go on display on 28 June 1995. On 2 July 1995, three people were arrested for throwing ash and human blood on the aircraft's fuselage, following an earlier incident in which a protester had thrown red paint over the gallery's carpeting. The exhibition closed on 18 May 1998, and the fuselage was returned to the Garber Facility for final restoration. Restoration work began in 1984, and would eventually require 300,000 staff hours. While the fuselage was on display, from 1995 to 1998, work continued on the remaining unrestored components. The aircraft was shipped in pieces to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia from March–June 2003, with the fuselage and wings reunited for the first time since 1960 on 10 April 2003 and assembly completed on 8 August 2003. The aircraft is currently at Washington Dulles International Airport in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, since the museum annex opened on 15 December 2003.

ENOLA GAY VICTIMS

Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture, and the largest city

in the Chūgoku region of western Honshu, the largest island of Japan. The city's name, means "Wide Island" in Japanese. Hiroshima gained city status on April 1, 1889. On April 1, 1980, Hiroshima became a designated city. As of 2006, the city had an estimated population of 1,154,391. Kazumi Matsui has been the city's mayor since April 2011.

On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the nuclear bomb "Little Boy"

was dropped on Hiroshima directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought the total number of deaths to 90,000–166,000. The population before the bombing was around to 350,000. Approximately 70% of the city's buildings were destroyed, and another 7% severely damaged. The public release of film footage of the city following the attack, and some of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission research, about the human effects of the attack, was restricted during the occupation of Japan, and much of this information was censored until signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, restoring control to the Japanese.

The book Hiroshima written by Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey , was originally featured in article form and published in the popular magazine The New Yorker, on 31 August 1946. It is reported to have reached Tokyo, in English, at least by January 1947 and the translated version was released in Japan in 1949. Despite the fact that the article was planned to be published over four issues, "Hiroshima" made up the entire contents of one issue of the magazine. Hiroshima narrates the stories of six bomb survivors immediately prior to and for months after the dropping of the Little Boy bomb.

The Oleander is the official flower of the city of Hiroshima because it was the first to bloom again after the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945. Hiroshima was rebuilt after the war, with help from the national government through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law passed in 1949. It provided financial assistance for

reconstruction, along with land donated that was previously owned by the national government and used for military purposes.

In 1949, a design was selected for the Hiroshima

Peace Memorial Park. Hiroshima Prefectural

Industrial Promotion Hall, the closest surviving

building to the location of the bomb's detonation,

was designated the Genbaku Dome or "Atomic

Dome", a part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Park. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

was opened in 1955 in the Peace Park. The

peace park also contains a Peace Pagoda, built

in 1966 by Nipponzan-Myōhōji. Uniquely, the

pagoda is made of steel, rather than the usual

stone.

Hiroshima was proclaimed a City of Peace by the

Japanese parliament in 1949, at the initiative of

its mayor, Shinzo Hamai (1905–1968). As a result,

the city of Hiroshima received more international attention as a desirable location for holding international conferences on peace as well as social issues. As part of that effort, the Hiroshima Interpreters' and Guide's Association (HIGA) was established in 1992 in order to facilitate interpretation for conferences, and the Hiroshima Peace Institute was established in 1998 within the Hiroshima University. The city government continues to advocate the abolition of all nuclear weapons and the Mayor of Hiroshima is the president of Mayors for Peace, an international mayoral organization mobilizing cities and citizens worldwide to abolish and eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2020.

Every year on August 6, the city of Hiroshima holds a Peace Memorial Ceremony to pray for the peaceful repose of the victims, for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and for lasting world peace. During that ceremony, the Mayor issues a Peace Declaration directed toward the world at large. As long as the need persists, Hiroshima's mayor will continue to issue these declarations calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. This is part of Hiroshima's effort to build a world of genuine and lasting world peace where no population will ever again experience the cruel devastation suffered by Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I do not believe that civilisation will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb.

Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.

Albert Einstein

When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it

and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

J. Robert Oppenheimer