![enola gay plane location enola gay plane location](http://www.aviation-central.com/1940-1945/images/aeb5d-eg.jpg)
Most members of the 509th still did not know why they were on Tinian, why they had special aircraft, or why they were sitting out big missions being flown by hundreds of B-29s. Someone wrote a poem deriding Tibbets’ outfit:īut take it from one who is sure of the score, Members of other units found 509th troops reluctant to converse, clannish, and tight-lipped.
![enola gay plane location enola gay plane location](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/200414120726-enola-gay-2.jpg)
He had to have some sense that nothing less than the fate of the world rested in the hands of his 1,760 men and 15 specially configured Superfortresses. Tibbets understood little of the science behind the Manhattan Project but he knew bombing and bombers. In charge of the 509th was Paul Tibbets, born in Illinois but a product of an Iowa upbringing, serious, earnest, deadpan. No one else at B-29 bases in the Marianas had enjoyed the luxury of arriving aboard their own transport planes. It was supposed to be a combat group, like the others on Guam, Saipan and Tinian, yet it had only two flying squadrons – one with B-29 Superfortress bombers, the other with C-54 Skymaster transports. The 509th’s distinctive tailcode of an arrow inside a circle was changed to that of the 6th Bomb Group’s “circle R” by Tibbets after Tokyo Rose noted the tailcodes of the newly-arrived aircraft in two separate radio broadcasts. In her interview, Nancy remembered that at Dick’s memorial service, Forrest Haggerty, a friend and author of the book on 43 Seconds to Hiroshima, said that the astronauts “wanted some very nice man to greet them at the Pearly Gates, and that was Dick Nelson.Boeing B-29 Enola Gay on Tinian in the Marianas Islands. Nelson died on Februat 3:00 a.m., which was three hours before the astronauts on the Space Shuttle Columbia were killed on reentry to the Earth’s atmosphere.
It read, ”Results excellent.” Richard Nelson died age 77 of a heart attack on 01-02-2003, as complications of emphysema, his family said. and is buried on the cemetery of Riverside National, California. Richard Nelson, the youngest of the crew, sent a coded message that was forwarded to President Harry Ship Truman. The bomb, code-named “Little Boy”, was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused extensive destruction. When the bomb detonated, about 1,900 feet above the city, Death and burial ground of Nelson, Richard “Dick” H. Is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of pilot Paul Tibbets. On 06-08-1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb as a weapon of war. Shumard, Assistant flight engineer, Private First Class Richard H. Stiborik, Radar operator, Sergeant Robert H. Duzenberryįlight engineer, Sergeant Joe S. “Bob” Caron, Tail gunner, Technical Sergeant Wyatt E. Jeppson, Assistant weaponeer, Technical Sergeant Georg R. “Deak” Parsons, Weapaneer and bomb commander, Lieutenant Jacob Beser, Radar countermeasures, also the only man to fly on both of the nuclear bombing aircraft, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Lewis, Co-pilot, Major Thomas Ferebee Bombardier, Captain Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk, Navigator, U.S. The crew members were Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets the pilot and Aircraft commander, Captain Robert A. The crew was taken to Tinian, a small island in the Marianas chain, where they practiced missions over Japan. He was the Radio Operator aboard the Enola Gay the plane that dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima on 06-08-1945. He was assigned to the 509th Composite Group, a secret, hand-picked group training for an undisclosed mission. Transferring to radio school in Iowa, he graduated near the top of his class. His plans to become a pilot ended at the Santa Ana Army Air Base because of poor eyesight. Nelson, Richard “Dick” H, born 26-04-1925 in Moscow, Idaho, was a United States Army World War II Veteran.