![enola gay plane take off location enola gay plane take off location](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2020/08/06/PDEM/808041ba-eec9-4dc3-83c8-32e4851d22ce-AP45010101335.jpg)
![enola gay plane take off location enola gay plane take off location](https://live.staticflickr.com/6002/5999969245_34de11e783.jpg)
Since the aircraft flew at 6 miles over the target, the crew had to get as far away as possible. The Manhattan Project engineers calculated that the shock wave would destroy the B-29 as far as 8 miles from the target. This meant that the aircraft was able to straighten out from a turn earlier, accelerate sooner, and still head straight away from the nuclear explosion.Īs the chart on your left shows, the turning radius of the B-29 aircraft was the key to finding the best direction away from the bomb blast. The bomb target was directly behind the aircraft when the aircraft had turned only 155 degrees. Thus, by the time the aircraft had straighted out at 180 degrees, it would not have had its tail to the bomb the bomb would have been aft and to the side!
![enola gay plane take off location enola gay plane take off location](https://s3-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/psh-ex-ftnikkei-3937bb4/images/2/6/3/4/624362-8-eng-GB/20170806_enolagay_body.jpg)
Even a tight turn can have a radius of a few miles.Īlthough it would normally make sense to turn 180 degrees, the wide turning radius changed the geometry of the scene. Second, the B-29 is a big aircraft, and it needs a lot of space to make a turn. The aircraft had to turn away from the bomb in order to get as far away from it as possible. This also meant that if the aircraft kept flying in the same direction it would be very close to the bomb blast. This meant that it would land several miles ahead of the drop point. Instead of 12 men on the Enola Gay, people would think there were only nine.The answer comes from geometry and a basic knowledge of flight, with a focus on the turning radius of a B-29 aircraft.įirst, the dropped bomb had forward velocity. Jeppson was worried that without some addition, the importance of his role, along with that of Navy Capt. Jeppson was concerned because he learned his name, along with two others, would be absent from a list of crew members long-ago stenciled on the side of the infamous B-29 bomber by the military. The new Udvar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum was about to open with the Enola Gay on display. It was 2003 when Jeppson felt compelled to come forward. Today he lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Molly, retired after a career spent at the helm of a handful of high-tech companies and working as consultant for the Department of Energy. Jeppson turned to graduate studies at University of California, Berkeley, after leaving the military. Now 90, Tibbets lives in a modest brick home in a well-kept neighborhood in Columbus and travels occasionally for air shows and veterans’ ceremonies. Most of the lives saved were Japanese,” the 84-year-old said from his suburban Atlanta retirement home near the base of Stone Mountain, where a large relief memorial carved out of the bare rock depicts Confederate heroes Jefferson Davis, Robert E. “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. The 9,000-pound bomb fell down toward the city as the Enola Gay banked away, the crew hoping to escape with their lives.ĭespite decades of controversy over whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb - which left some 140,000 dead in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki three days later - Van Kirk remains convinced it was necessary because it shortened the war and relieved the Allies of having to mount a land invasion that might have cost far more lives on both sides. Under cover of night, he guided the bomber nearly exactly as planned - the plane was just 15 seconds behind schedule. It was a perfect mission, Van Kirk recalls.
![enola gay plane take off location enola gay plane take off location](https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/news/up-close-and-personal-with-enola-gay-the-most-polarizing-airplane-of-all-time-177922_1.jpg)
Van Kirk, then 24, was the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped “Little Boy” - the world’s first atomic bomb - over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug.