Overview

• The restored Enola Gay has been on display at the Smithsonian’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center since 2003 and continues to draw visitors reflecting on the dawn of the nuclear age.
• Historian Christopher Van Valkenburgh’s Superfortress Graveyard chronicles the journeys of Full House, Up an’ Atom, and Necessary Evil from Silverplate conversions to destruction in postwar China Lake weapons trials.
• Under the Silverplate program, 15 B-29s received specialized modifications—including pneumatic bomb bay doors and removed gun turrets—to carry and deploy atomic weapons.
• Serial 44-86292 was personally selected and named Enola Gay by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr. in May 1945 before it delivered the “Little Boy” bomb on Hiroshima and scouted weather for the Nagasaki mission.
• While Enola Gay and Bockscar remain preserved in public museums, three other Silverplate bombers were dismantled and used as ground targets during nuclear-era testing at China Lake.