Boeing B-29 Enola Gay

This is the bomber that dropped The Bomb on Hiroshima that ended the big war. Colonel Paul Tibbets sat in the left seat, next to these windows. Tibbets named his aircraft after his mother rather than the missus. He and the wife were having troubles and eventually divorced. He was never around.

I met him on his 80th birthday at the Cavanaugh Museum in north Dallas about six years ago. His grandson flies the B-2 bomber.

The "Little Boy" atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the simplest type of nuke which shot uranium together to form a critical mass that kicked off the nuclear reaction. It was so simple they didn't bother testing it. The problem was that it was so simple it was easy for it to go off by accident. A crash could jam the uranium into a critical mass and boom! If the B-29 ditched in the ocean, immersion in water could short out the failsafe system and boom! And The Bomb was too heavy to bring it back and land. It was nearly as dangerous for the crew to carry The Bomb as for its intended target.

The Enola Gay is the only aircraft on display with a big plastic splash guard between it and you to stop liberal knuckleheads from vandalizing it. Already, protestors threw a bottle of red paint at it on the opening day, putting a dent in this historical artifact.