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The plane’s navigator and last surviving member of the crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died last week at the age of 93.īefore his death, Van Kirk told the Associated Press that while the mission went perfectly, and that he believed the bombing which killed some 140,000 people actually saved lives in the long run, he felt slightly conflicted. Tibbets, a 30-year-old colonel at the time of the bombing, named the bomber after his mother. With a wingspan of 141 feet and a gross weight of 137,500 pounds, the Enola Gay is too large and too heavy to be housed intact in the museums flagship building. The refurbished Enola Gay, the B-29 Bomber that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, fell at the center of a debate. Inside the window-covered nose of the plane, you can see where pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee sat during Special Mission No. The plane was further modified to carry the atomic bomb - dubbed “Little Boy” - which was dropped from the front bomb bay onto the heart of Hiroshima during the mission. Robert Lewis died in Virginia in 1983, Tibbets in 2007 in Ohio. The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past. The Enola Gay exhibit was not exempt from the wrath of the newly appointed lawmakers: during the height of the controversy, the Senate passed a resolution submitted by leading Republican Senator Nancy Kassebaum which condemned the exhibit as revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans. On 6 November 1945, Lewis flew the Enola Gay back to the United States, arriving at the 509th’s new base at Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico, on 8 November. From the taming of the West to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the portrayal of. (Associated Press)At the time of its mission, the Enola Gay was among the most sophisticated, propeller-driven bombers in the sky during the Second World War, according to the Smithsonian. This hand-drawn document was auctioned off for 37,500, but the log books did not meet their reserve price and were not sold. Paul Tibbets named the modified Boeing B-29 bomber used in Special Mission No.