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On the ground, a blast equivalent to 12,000 tons of TNT tore across the city in a millisecond. “My God…” Tibbets muttered to himself as the sky turned white. The fireball was hotter than the surface of the sun. Neutrons split nuclei, which split other nuclei, and the atomic chain reaction immediately filled the sky with a brief but intensely bright flash. The internal “gun” device shot into the fissile uranium core. The fireball was hotter than the surface of the sun.įorty-five seconds later, at roughly 2,000 feet above ground level, time and barometric triggers inside Little Boy initiated their firing mechanism. The Enola Gay and its escort aircraft moved fast, knowing that even at their high altitude, any resultant shock wave could damage their aircraft. He immediately pushed the throttles forward and rapidly banked away from the city. Tibbets remained silent and closed his eyes, placing his hand on the aircraft’s throttles. Almost in a whisper, he muttered, “Thirty seconds. A wide structure, it was easily visible from the air, crossing the Ota River, just north of the island where the Nakajima-cho district was located.įerebee turned his lips toward the intercom. Opening bomb bay doors.” Tibbets remained silent and closed his eyes, placing his hand on the aircraft’s throttles.įerebee carefully lined up his bombsight on the Aioi Bridge, smack in the middle of downtown. After all, there were only about three aircraft overhead. It couldn’t have been a major attack, they thought. Unbeknownst to Tibbets and his crew, enemy air defense units had canceled all air-raid alerts. This was one of the few cities in Japan that was left fully intact by allied Air Forces, who had instead turned their sights on the firebombing of other large population and military-industrial centers. The whitish-gray tint of thousands of buildings and structures colored the expansive flat ground below the hills, and directly in front of the aircraft the port of Hiroshima appeared with its long channels and sawtooth-like wharves. At 32,000 feet, the brownish-green mountains surrounding the broad city of Hiroshima were clearly visible. Moments later, he turned the B-29 bomber over to his bombardier, Thomas Ferebee. He suppressed his thoughts and checked the time. On the other hand, he knew he might be able to single-handedly bring the Pacific war to an abrupt end. On one hand, he was fully aware there would be untold human death on the ground as a result of his direct actions. In his own mind, Tibbets struggled with conflicting feelings he’d never share with his crewmen. He and his crew didn’t completely understand what they carried, but they knew whatever was inside the nearly five-ton bomb - affectionately named “Little Boy” - would unleash a destructive power on Japan such as the world had never seen. Tibbets had ordered crewman Lt Morris Jeppson to arm their cargo about twenty minutes ago. He and his crew had taken off from the island of Tinian six hours prior to this moment, then rendezvoused briefly with escort bombers over Iwo Jima. † Pronunciation for Enola: IY as in "eat (IY.T)" N as in "knee (N.IY)" OW as in "oak (OW.K)" L as in "lay (L.EY)" UW as in "two (T.“Ten minutes to target,” Tibbets casually mumbled over the intercom. Within all girl names in its family, Enola was nevertheless the most widely used in 2018.Ī baby name that sounds like Enola is the name Imala.
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The baby name has seen a fall in frequency since then, and is currently used on a very modest scale. At the height of its usage in 1904, 0.007% of baby girls were named Enola. See also the related categories, english, word (element), mother, heroine (conqueror), fields (meadow), paul, literature, invented, and american.Įnola is an uncommon baby girl name. Variant forms inherit the origin and meaning of the name Enola.Ģ: Enola is of Native American origin. The name has also appeared in literature, borne by a character also called Enola Gay in Martin Amis' black comic novel London Fields (1989). The airplane was named after the pilot Paul Tibbets' mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, who was in turn named after the heroine of a novel. It has been made known by 'Enola Gay', the B-29 Superfortress bomber which dropped the first atomic bomb in the attack on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. It has been suggested that the name could be invented from a reversal of the word 'alone', or else it could be Native American in origin. The name is a late 19th-century coinage of disputed origin. The baby girl name Enola is pronounced as iy-N OWLuw- †.ġ: Enola is primarily used in the English language and it is also of English origin.