The Enola Gay and the Bockscar

The vehicles used to transport Little Boy and Fat Man to their targets are scenes of enormous pressure. Thorough preparations are required to make the Enola Gay – named for its pilot’s mother – ready for its mission, which will bring enormous destruction to Hiroshima but also an early end to the war. These include measures to keep the pilot awake, to prevent the pilot from being captured, and instructions to keep the crew from being knocked from the sky or blinded by the bomb blast. Three days later the Bockscar’s mission nearly ends disastrously, with equipment malfunctioning, the target obscured, fuel low, and a near fatal collision with another plane. The end result, in both cases, is a successful delivery, but the circumstances both planes endured showed that such an outcome was not guaranteed.