1, 2007), the Navigator-Captain Theodore J. Paul Tibbets: The Man Who Piloted the Enola Gay General Paul Tibbets lived for decades with the memory of dropping the atomic bomb. Van Kirk (died July 28, 2014), and the Bombardier-Major Thomas W. By Bill Van Orman Today, in his nineties, Paul Tibbets is still a handsome man. His gaze, even with the heavied lids of age, is intense. The Enola Gay is the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb, code-named 'Little Boy', to be used in war, by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the attack on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945, just before the end of World War II. The Enola Gay was a bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line. The B-29 was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The Enola Gay gained additional national attention in 1995 when the cockpit and nose section of the aircraft was exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) of the Smithsonian Institution in downtown Washington, D.C. The exhibit was changed due to a controversy over original historical script displayed with the aircraft.
