Enola gay wendover

He briefed us a bit, but he didn’t tell us what the project was.”

Only later did Jeppson realize why he’d been sent to Wendover.

Wendover Air Force Base was closed in 1963, but periodically saw service into the 1980s when it hosted Air Force units participating in the famous Red Flag training exercises.

The 509th was a completely self-sufficient unit of nearly 1,800 airmen, machinists, engineers and scientists charged with carrying the atomic bomb to the enemy. He was also a military test pilot for the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, the plane the AAF chose for the atomic missions.

Army brass offered Tibbets the choice of three bases for the 509th, but he never even made it to the other two; one look at Wendover and he was sold.

The scientists at Los Alamos conceded that the shockwaves from the blast could destroy the plane that dropped it, even at 30,000 feet. Tibbets had decided he would pilot the mission himself and chose 44-86292 for the task. The air base on Utah’s western border had a large airstrip, barracks, hangars and other support buildings built by conventional bomber groups starting in 1940.

Lewis was reportedly quite upset to walk out onto the airstrip and see his airplane decorated with new nose art.

At 2:45 a.m. Here, the 509th Composite Group trained for their top-secret mission to drop the world’s first atomic bombs over Japan. Because of the remote location and lack of large population centers the base was ideal for newly created heavy bombardment groups flying the Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” and the Consolidated B-24 “Liberator”.

“But we never talked about it.”

Neither did Joe Badali, although he knew better than most what was going on. To save weight, Tibbets ordered the planes stripped of their guns, turrets, ammunition and fire-control systems. The Wendover range proved ideal for testing and monitoring the bomb’s ballistic characteristics. ‘Doc’ offered rides and tours over the four day event.

In 1940 the small train stop of Wendover, Utah was selected and work began in November of that year. the next morning—August 6, 1945—the newly christened Enola Gay took to the South Pacific skies with 12 crew members and one Little Boy uranium bomb. Once armed, the Enola Gay climbed above 30,000 feet and set a course for the Japanese mainland.

At 8:15 a.m., Tibbets and crew released Little Boy, 31,600 feet over Hiroshima, and immediately went into the hard right diving turn they’d practiced so many times in Wendover.

“We found out after the war that our latrine orderly was an FBI agent,” laughs Badali. “He took us around in a carry-all to talk to us about this highly secret but important project. It would become a manufacturing and shipping center during WWII. 

• Hill Field, now Hill Air Force Base was established in 1940 but its beginnings were in 1934 as a mail supply relay.

  He and six other electronics specialists arrived in Wendover at the behest of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the scientific arm of the atomic program.

  “We were met there [in Wendover] not by the Air Force but by Professor Brode from the University of Cal Berkeley,” says Jeppson, who passed away in 1987 at his home in Las Vegas. In 1940, the United States was supplying allies with weapons and support and quietly building up its own military power.

  On the Utah side, the old airfield control tower stands watch over an assembly of buildings in various states of renovation including the cavernous, arched hangar at the east end of the airstrip—which once housed the gleaming Enola Gay, fresh off the assembly line.

  On the other side of the country, the plane itself has been painstakingly restored and is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum near Washington D.C.

  The Wendover Airfield is slowly being restored by the Historic Wendover Airfield Society, which
  has preserved many of the barracks, hangars and support buildings where the crews lived in secrecy and trained for the atomic mission.

  Technically, it was still not the Enola Gay. The plane would not get its familiar moniker until August 5, the eve of the first drop on Hiroshima. The Topaz camp didn’t close until October 31, 1945.

  

   

  Located in Wendover, UT, Wendover Airfield was a training base for the Army Air Corps with a major role in the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort to develop the world’s first atomic bomb.