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I am the only pilot to have flown on both atomic missions. 6, 1945, Tibbets' B-29 dropped the nearly five. "The people that were here had no idea what they were working on," says Sandy resident Jim Petersen, president of the Historic Wendover Airfield Foundation and director of aviation for Tooele County and Wendover Airport. Sweeney, United States Air Force, retired. Pilot of Enola Gay Had No Regrets for Hiroshima Paul Tibbets, who piloted the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb, has died at age 92. We knew because of the Teletype machine that was brought into our area, at the request of General Lester. Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, waves from his cockpit before takeoff from Tinian on August 6,1945 in this handout photo courtesy. Of course, we knew about when President Harry Truman was supposed to be meeting with Stalin and Churchill, he recalled. Paul Tibbets, the 509th's commander - knew the truth about that mission in the months the airmen were assembling and testing components, and dropping 150 bomb prototypes over the West Desert and California's Salton Sea. During the first week of August 1945, Tibbets watched, and waited. None of them liked it, but all believed it. Up to 17,000 trained at Wendover at its peak, dwarfing what had been a railroad stop on the edge of Utah's West Desert.įewer than 4,000 airmen were training here, though, by the time the unit that would become Wendover's most famous gathered in spring 1945 - the 509th Composite Group with a super-secret mission. For years after the war, the crew of the Enola Gay never wavered in their belief they did what they had to do. Thousands of airmen learned to fly heavy bombers during World War II at Wendover Army Air Base, which was authorized by a Congress anticipating war and became a sprawling base with 668 buildings after the Dec.