On the right and to the rear of the Enola Gay was Maj. Paul Tibbet's Enola Gay, the B-29 carrying the atomic bomb dubbed "Little Boy." 6, Marquardt's B-29 - Necessary Evil - was to the left and rear of Col. He was 84 and had Parkinson's disease.Īs he flew toward Hiroshima from the island of Tinian, north of Guam, in the early morning of that Aug. 15, a day after the 58th anniversary of the Japanese surrender that ended World War II. Marquardt, the former Army Air Force pilot whose B-29 was designated to photograph the historic bomb blast over the Japanese port city, died in a nursing home in Murray, Utah, on Aug. "It was like the sun had come out of the ground and just exploded," he often recalled. George Marquardt's memory of the atomic blast over Hiroshima, on Aug. The B-29 will be hoisted 8 feet off the floor so that other aircraft can be displayed under its 141-foot wingspan. The center will house 200 aircraft and 135 space artifacts too big to be displayed at the museum, said John R. 15, when the Udvar-Hazy Center opens near Washington Dulles International Airport.
The plane will be open to public viewing Dec. Curators restored each part to the way it looked on "mission day," down to particular radio tubes used at the time, Daso said. Over the years, some parts of the Enola Gay were replaced in normal use and others were lost or taken by collectors, said Dik Daso, the Smithsonian's curator of modern military aircraft. 6, 1945, when it dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. The goal of the restoration, which took 300,000 hours of work over nearly 20 years, was to make the aircraft look as it did on Aug. The Smithsonian Institution unveiled the restored Enola Gay this week, prior to making the B-29 bomber that helped end World War II the centerpiece of a new annex to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The Enola Gay got its name from its pilot, Paul W. When the $300 million Udvar-Hazy center opens, the plane will be displayed among more than 180 aircraft, 100 spacecraft and related artifacts spanning a century of aviation history. The Norden bombsight, the original propellers, and many of the internal components used during the historic mission will be part of the restored aircraft. The typical B-29 spent thousands of hours in combat. "Enola Gay has less than 200 hours flying time," said Alison. On the Hiroshima flight, much of the plane's heavy armor plate was left off to enable it to fly higher and farther than most of the nearly 4,000 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses manufactured during the war. The aluminum-skinned bomber will appear much the same as when it rolled off an assembly line at the Martin Aircraft Company plant in Omaha, Nebraska, in June 1945. "We're going to have the opportunity to put the whole aircraft together and on display for visitors to see," said Alison. The blast killed 66,000 people and injured as many others. 6, 1945, the plane's nine-member crew made history when they dropped the 9,700-pound atomic bomb "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. Alison, chief of collections of the Air and Space Museum. "Enola Gay is significant in its own right because of the mission it flew," said Thomas M. The plane will not be seen publicly again until December 2003 when it will become a centerpiece of the Smithsonian's new Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. That display followed the cancellation of a larger and bitterly contested exhibit about the birth of the nuclear age. In recent years, the front portion of the plane was seen by about 4 million visitors at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall. The plane that ushered in the atomic age was loaded aboard a flatbed trailer Wednesday for transport to a storage and restoration facility in Suitland, Maryland. After the restoration it will look much as it did when it flew its famous mission in 1945. WASHINGTON - The Enola Gay, the plane used in the bombing of Hiroshima, is headed for restoration and then display two years from now. Enola Gay Headed For Restoration and Display From the Associated Press