The bomb, code-named 'Little Boy', was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused unprecedented destruction.
On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb on an enemy target in a war. It was standardized as a bombardment group and redesignated the 509th Bombardment Group, Very Heavy, on 10 July 1946.Įnola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of the pilot, then-Colonel (later Brigadier General) Paul Tibbets. In the postwar era, the 509th Composite Group was one of the original ten USAAF bombardment groups assigned to Strategic Air Command on 21 March 1946, the only one equipped with specially-configured B-29 Superfortress capable of delivering atomic bombs. It conducted the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945. The 509th Composite Group (509th CG) was a United States Army Air Forces unit created during World War II, and tasked with operational deployment of nuclear weapons.
