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On the morning of 9 August, Bockscar took to the skies with five additional aircraft: The Great Artiste, Enola Gay, Laggin' Dragon, Big Stink, and Full House. Both aircraft flew the mission the day of the bombing. The majority of these bombs were conventional versions of the Fat Man bomb that were dropped on industrial targets on mainland Japan. This was largely due to the other crew having more training hours dropping test atomic devices. Meanwhile, Bockscar's crew piloted The Great Artiste. Throughout the month of August up to the date of the bombing, this crew had been piloting Victor 77 for dry-drops of atomic devices.
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On the day that the Bockscar was scheduled to drop the bomb on the Japanese city of Kokura, she was instead piloted by a crew from one of her other sisters, The Great Artiste. The only persistent identifier ever in place on the airframe, as a result is her victor number: 77. All aircraft in the 509th Composite Group (of which Enola Gay, Bockscar, and the other thirteen aircraft involved with the nuclear mission belonged), carried the arrowhead markings, but were changed prior to mission deployment for security reasons. Just prior to her atomic mission on 9 AUG, the arrowhead on the tail was replaced with a triangle-N marking. These were the only identifiers of the Bockscar until after the war ended, as she did not sport any nose art. The original markings of the plane included a single arrowhead on the tail and her victor number of 77. From Wendover, she flew to Tinian in June of 1945 in preparation for package delivery. She was delivered to Wendover, Utah where the flight stick was handed to CPT Frederick C.
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Like the other fourteen B-29's in Block 36, Bockscar was hand selected by COL Tibbets off the Glen L. The aircraft entered service the following month running drills for the Manhattan Project - as all Block 36 Silverplate aircraft did. Generally this is attributed to a number of different things, but many aviation historians simply refer to her as "the bomber that ended the war." Bockscar's story begins when she was first delivered to the USAAF on. Let's take a brief look at the origins, history, and record of this other iconic B-29.īockscar's story is a bit less pronounced than the Enola Gay. Unlike her sister, Bockscar had a bit more of a difficult time in her atomic mission.
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The Bockscar was one of the first fifteen modified B-29's that were delivered with the Enola Gay. However, less known is the aircraft that dropped the second atomic package three days later on Nagasaki (and even less so were the aircraft that flew in formation with both of them). Piloted by COL Paul Tibbets, this B-29 made it into the history books on the morning of 6 August 1945 when it dropped an atomic payload on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The most well known of these was the B-29 Enola Gay. However, most notorious of the B-29's are the frames design that were capable of delivering atomic ordnance to a target: the Saddletree's (originally known as the Silverplate's). It was a B-29 that set dozens of flight length records between 19, and it was the B-29 to function as the first dedicated reconnaissance platform and the first airborne refueling platform. The B-29 bomber has worked it's way into the annals of history through various means.