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Of the 16 B-25s that launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet, 15 were lost, and the surviving plane was captured by Soviet forces. The strike, informally known as the Doolittle Raid (after Jimmy Doolittle, the mission commander), was more propaganda than strategy, and the attack was close to a suicide mission. The B-25 had been used in an attack against Tokyo in 1942. The first was getting a bomber with a much greater reach than the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress or the B-25 Mitchell Bomber, neither of which had enough range to get to Japan, conduct a bombing mission and then return safely to a U.S.-forward airfield. The two nuclear attacks remain the only two uses of nuclear munitions in time of war.Īs the United States took the advantage against Japan in the Pacific theater, American planners knew that the key to bringing the war to Japan while avoiding getting caught up in a long and bloody land, sea and air war was twofold. Estimates on the number of Japanese people killed in the two raids vary from just over 125,000 to 225,000. If you know anything about the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, it’s likely the fact that two of these planes, the first called Enola Gay, the second, Bockscar, were used to drop one atomic bomb each on two Japanese cities in 1945, Hiroshima on August 6, and three days later, Nagasaki on August 9. LeMay headed the United States Strategic Air Command for three decades and was the principal architect of the bombing campaigns in Japan, Korea and Vietnam, including the firebombing attack of Tokyo in 1945, which really is the subject of the podcasts. It’s also the subject, in a roundabout way, of four episodes of best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast, in which he profiles General Curtis LeMay, again, in a roundabout way. But if you were to use a different yardstick-its impact-or yet another one-its technological advancement over the hardware it replaced-it’s arguably the most important plane to ever go to war. If you measured the importance of a warplane’s legacy based on its longevity, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress doesn’t even make the top 10. In 1949, the Smithsonian Institution assumed control of the plane, and it is now part of the Air and Space Museum.The 19th Bomb Group crew photographed with a B-29 Superfortress in 1951 on Kadena AFB in Okinawa, Japan.
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On August 30, 1946, the Enola Gay was placed in storage and never flew another combat mission. Martin Company delivered the plane to the military on May 18, 1945.
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The United States military kept the Enola Gay in use for only a short period of time. Tibbets named the plane after his mother. Captain Paul Tibbets, the Enola Gay's pilot, personally selected this plane to drop the atomic bomb. The plane had a 2,200-horsepower engine, with a maximum speed of 360 miles per hour and a range of 3,250 miles. Martin Company assembled it in Omaha, Nebraska, in early 1945. Boeing Aircraft Company manufactured the plane, and the Glenn L. This atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, along with a second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, prompted the Japanese government to surrender, bringing World War II to an end. On August 6, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.