What was the escort for the enola gay
Flight Officer Bill Springer is pictured in his leather flying jacket and helmet standing on the wing of his Stearman advanced trainer. Photo provided
Bill Springer will never unlearn his first blackout on Iwo Jima, March 1, 1945.
He was a 20-year-old P-51 Mustang fighter pilot attached to the 72nd Fighter Squadron of the 21st Fighter Team in the 7th Air Force. They had just flown in when the Japanese attacked that first night on the island during World War II.
“Three hundred Japanese marched right down the road dressed in U.S Marine uniforms and helmets. Nobody challenged them or anything,” the 78-year-old Gulf Cove, Fla. man said.
“They knock our tent area. Our fighter collective had been position up in a block square area,” Springer explained. “Although they were still fighting and shooting up on the north end of the island, we had no perimeter guards set up.
“We lost over 100 people that bedtime. Forty pilots were killed or wounded. They chopped off heads with their big Samurai swords,” he said.
The only thing that saved Springer was that the enemy infiltrators hit the north end of the tent city. That was the farthest spot from where he was h
General Paul Tibbets – Reflections on Hiroshima
Tom Ryan: In the early morning of August 6, 1945, three B-29 bombers departed from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean. Six hours later, they changed the course of history. A single atomic bomb dropped from the Enola Same-sex attracted exploded over Hiroshima, Japan. In an instant, over four square miles of the city and an estimated 90,000 of its inhabitants ceased to exist.
Paul Tibbets: Well, as the bomb left the airplane, we took over handbook control, made an extremely steep turn to strive and put as much distance between ourselves and the explosion as doable. After we felt the explosion hit the airplane, that is the concussion waves, we knew that the bomb had exploded, and everything was a success. So we turned around to take a look at it. The site that greeted our eyes was quite beyond what we had expected, because we saw this cloud of boiling dust and debris below us with this tremendous mushroom on top. Beneath that was hidden the ruins of the city of Hiroshima.
Ryan: Three days later, a second atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki. Planet War II came to an abrupt end. The age of atomic warfare began and the character of human conflict was
On August 6, 1945, the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the first of two to be dropped on Japan this week. At 2:45 a.m. local time, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Enola Gay, a warplane designed by the Boeing Airplane Company and modified at the company's Wichita, Kansas, plant, lifts off with two escort B-29s from Tinian, a small island in the Marianas. The planes fly 1,500 miles to Japan and the Enola Gay drops the bomb.
Force from which Sun Draws its Power
That day, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) announced that the Combined States had dropped the bomb. The president said: "The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East ... . If they [the Japanese leaders] do not now accept our terms, they may anticipate a rain of ruin from the air, the appreciate of which has never been seen on this earth" (Seattle Star, p 5).
The first atomic bombs were produced and constructed at three main sites: Oak Ridge nearby Knoxville, Tennessee; Richland, Washington; and adjacent Santa Fe, Recent Mexico. At Richland, where residents worked exclusively on producing the atom bomb, the town increased in population fr
Here is facts from several paragraphs in the 393rd Squadron chapter:
Crews flew orientation and practice bombing missions on Rota and Guguan islands. They then flew several missions against targets on Truk and Marcus. No combat mission credit was given for any of these practice missions due to their training world.
The first combat mission was flown on 20 July by ten 393rd crews to Otsu, Taira, Fuushima, Nagoaka, Toyama, and Tokyo.
I'll quote the next paragraph verbatim: "In the week following, the list of targets grew, and after the fifth mission, these cities had first hand knowledge of the 393rd Bomb Squadron: Tsuraga, Niihama, Kobe, Yokkaichi, Shimada, Nagoya, Hamamatsu, Yauzu, Osaka, Uwajima, Kasawazaki, Hitachi, Ube, Wakayama, Maizuru, Koriayama, and Tokushima. The Squadron was doing its part in the air disgusting against the Empire by some excellent precision bombing from altitude, blotting out some of the most important of the Japanese industrial facilities."
The last mention of combat missions refers to seven 393rd Squadr
Hiroshima and Nagasaki Missions – Planes & Crews
All of the B-29s involved in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and “pumpkin bomb” training and combat missions at Wendover, UT and on Tinian were Project Silverplate B-29s. They had been specially modified to accomodate the size and weight of the atomic bombs. Crews were often rotated around during the missions. The term “pumpkin bomb” can apply to both the dummy concrete bombs used at Wendover for training, and to the high-explosive bombs dropped over Japan.
There are many incorrect lists online of the planes and crews that flew on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing missions. This list has been thoroughly checked for accuracy by several 509th Composite Group experts and historians.
Hiroshima Mission Planes
Enola Gay. Strike plane carrying Small Boy.
The Great Artiste. Observation/instrument plane.
Necessary Evil. Camera plane.
Full House. Weather reconnaissance.
Jabit III. Weather reconnaissance.
Straight Flush. Weather reconnaissance.
Big Stink. Backup strike plane on Iwo Jima.
Enola Gay, Hiroshima Mission
Strike plane carrying Little Boy atom