Jeremy Kinney, the Air and Space Museum’s curator of American military aviation, 1919-1945. “All of the armor that protects the crew was removed to save weight,” said Dr. The famous B-29 Superfortress rolled off the Glenn Martin assembly line in the spring of 1945 with what was known as a “silverplate modification” specifically for the atomic mission.
It’s a plane with a huge, controversial, world-changing story to tell. Seventy-five years ago, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, bringing an end to a long and devastating World War II and making the Enola Gay, the B-29 that delivered it, one of the most famous in history.
