He gave it the name and had it painted on the plane before taking off from Tinian Island in the Marianas at 0245 local time amidst a media circus. Tibbets as a tribute for her support of his becoming an aviator. The plane was named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of the bomber's captain, Col. Įngines: Four 2200 HP Wright Cyclone R-3350īuilt at the Martin plant in Omaha, Nebraska, delivered and personally selected by Tibbets.

Enola Gay was the name of the specially modified B-29 US Army Air Force long-range bomber of the 509th Composite Group that dropped the atomic bomb nicknamed Little Boy on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the morning of.