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The exhibition text summarized the history and development of the Boeing B-29 fleet used in bombing raids against Japan.Īnother portion of the exhibit detailed the painstaking efforts of Smithsonian aircraft restoration specialists who had spent more than a decade restoring parts of the Enola Gay for this exhibition. The components on display included two engines, the vertical stabilizer, an aileron, propellers, and the forward fuselage that contains the bomb bay.Ī video presentation about the Enola Gay's mission included interviews with the crew before and after the mission including mission pilot Col. Charged with dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, 6th August 1945. It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay. Jeppson’s death leaves Theodore Van Kirk, 89, the Enola Gay’s navigator, as the plane’s last survivor.This past exhibition, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, told the story of the role of the Enola Gay in securing Japanese surrender. In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay took off from the island of Tinian and headed north by northwest toward Japan. his stepsons, Mike Sullivan of Pahrump, Nev., and John Sullivan of Lakeport, Calif., and a stepdaughter, Jane Ross, of Midland, Ontario a brother, Lawrence, of Salt Lake City 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Some chose to keep a low profile and others spoke. two daughters from his first marriage, Nancy Hoskins of Colorado Springs and Carol English of Medford, Ore. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Jeppson is survived by their daughter, Sally Jeppson, of Gackle, N.D. Jeppson’s first marriage ended in divorce. He sold the plugs for $167,500 to a retired physicist who collected military memorabilia. VanKirk, also known as 'Dutch,' was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, that dropped Little Boy - the world's first atomic bomb - over the Japanese city of Hiroshima Aug. Beser also flew on the Nagasaki A-bomb mission-the only man to do both. A second atomic bomb, Fat Man, killed 80,000 in Nagasaki three days later. weapons deal, he replied without hesitation, Paul Tibbets is the man to do it. The Justice Department sought to block the auction on the grounds that the plugs were government property and perhaps contained secret data, but a federal judge in San Francisco ruled in favor of Mr. Enola Gay touches down on the runway at Tinian on Aug. upon a time, you flew a plane called the Enola Gay over the city of. Jeppson sought to auction off Enola Gay souvenirs he had brought back with him: a green electronic plug designed to prevent an accidental detonation in flight, and a spare among the red plugs that armed the bomb and were destroyed when it exploded. He worked on nuclear projects at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and later founded a company that manufactured high-power microwave heating systems for industrial use and food processing.
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“The rest of us saw the billowing clouds and the mushroom cloud rising,” he told The Las Vegas Sun in 2000. When the bomb detonated above Hiroshima, the Enola Gay’s tailgunner was the only crewman who witnessed the explosion, Mr. He divided his time between Wendover and the New Mexico desert before departing for Tinian and the final preparations to drop the bomb. The Enola Gay is one of the most famous-some might call it infamous-aircrafts in history. Lieutenant Jeppson was assigned to help the Manhattan Project scientists who were assembling the bomb at Los Alamos, N.M., to understand its electronic devices.