The Enola Gay, B-29 Superfortress, that carried and dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, has not only been an aircraft that sparked debates but also has been an object of fascination and moral questioning. Its mission dramatically ended World War II, but also allowed the world to enter the nuclear age, a step that is still dividing opinion between the veterans, historians, and the public even now.
The Enola Gay was definitely different from any other B-29 coming off the production line in 1945. It was one of the “Silverplate” experimental bombs, which was a project aimed at simplifying the massive size and weight of a nuclear weapon for the bombers. In order to make it faster and more light, the plane had its armor removed, remote-controlled gun turrets taken off, and there was only a tail gun left.
These modifications were the lifeline of Little Boy, the 10,000-pound uranium bomb that was going to change the history of mankind. According to the data, it was initially identified as aircraft number 82, and only then, on the night of the task, Colonel Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group, baptized the plane with his mother’s name—Enola Gay.
Nevertheless, in the middle of 1945, President Harry S. Truman was left with no good alternatives as the war in the Pacific persisted. In his opinion, he could go on with the firebombing that had already killed hundreds of thousands, or he could make a very expensive and dangerous attempt to invade Japan, kill a very high number of soldiers, or demonstrate the atomic bomb in such a way that people could be impressed but not scared, or lastly, he could directly deploy the weapon on a city and then wait for the capitulation. The final decision, however, was that Truman and his military aides saw the quickest end to the conflict being a direct hit.
The following is the event on the night of August 6, 1945, at 12:15 am, Tibbets and his 11-man crew took off from Tinian Island, home to the largest air base in the world. They had rehearsed for weeks using “pumpkin bombs,” which were the size and weight replicas of the atomic device. Ferebee at 8:15 a.m. unleashed the terror over Hiroshima, and Little Boy was promptly disarmed about 1,800 feet above the city. The power of the explosion was equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.
The heat at the epicenter exceeded 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, thus killing tens of thousands of people immediately. The birds that used to fly over the city were killed, the buildings started to collapse, and the radiation victims appeared in the following days and weeks. From afar, the crew of the Enola Gay could see the mushroom cloud rising into the sky, fully aware that what they had done was something unprecedented in the world.
The second bomb hit Nagasaki only three days later, and on August 15, Emperor Hirohito declared Japan’s surrender, thus ending the most devastating war in human history. The controversy, however, surrounding the atomic bomb usage, was so intense that the argument still goes on today. In the eyes of the crew of the Enola Gay and other Americans, the bombings were the only way to save the most lives by making the invasion impossible. On the other handsome, voices stated that the bombings were very brutal, and there was no use in doing that, quite the contrary, it was inhumane.
The Enola Gay was taken apart and kept hidden for years after the war; hence, its narration was mostly incoherent. Upon the completion of its refurbishment and the placing of it on display at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian, it again stirred up controversy.
The proposition for showing an exhibit with the inclusion of the Japanese perspective and the complete human loss of life was met with rejection from veterans’ groups and political leaders; hence, the exhibition was limited to telling the history of the aircraft itself rather than implying the issue of the mission.
The Enola Gay is still today a cause of division among the audience that visits the aircraft. Some people understand it as an expression of great scientific achievement and a symbol of triumph, the others just regard it as a sobering reminder of something terrible beyond one’s imagination. The fact of the matter is, the questions around this piece of history occurring in the past, which reappear in the present and future times, relate to how societies recapture wars, how they pay tribute to those who participated, and how they come to terms with the human cost of technological advancements.
The Enola Gay is more than just a display of events in a museum; it is a remembrance of the profound impact that the war could have changed by technology and the ethical predicament that follows. The story of the bomb is so tightly bound to the beginning of the nuclear age that every generation is led to question what victory, responsibility, and peace really stand for.
