military’s most famous warplanes, the Boeing B29 Superfortress dubbed “Enola Gay” lands at its Tinian Island base after the historic atomic bombing mission against the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug.
The lumbering aluminum plane with a 141-foot wingspan had been stripped of its armor and all defensive weaponry but its tail guns. But it still weighed 65 tons by itself and carried 7,000 gallons of fuel.Īs the plane strained to gain speed, Tibbets knew he was using up a lot of runway. Four B-29s had crashed and exploded on Tinian the night before, according to historians.
