Enola Gay was the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare.
On August 6, 1945, the aircraft dropped the uranium bomb Little Boy over Hiroshima, Japan. Colonel Paul Tibbets piloted the mission. The bombing was the first use of a nuclear weapon in combat and occurred during the final weeks of World War II.
Tibbets named the aircraft after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets. The mission also included support aircraft, including The Great Artiste, which carried scientific instruments, and another aircraft later named Necessary Evil for photographic work.
Three days later, Bockscar dropped the plutonium bomb Fat Man over Nagasaki. That distinction is important because Enola Gay is sometimes incorrectly identified as the Nagasaki bomber. The restored aircraft is displayed at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.