B-29 & P-51

[earntaz]

As a prior Air Force (462 Weapons Troop), I had the opportunity to talk to Paul Tibbets and Dutch Van Kirk at Chanute in the 80’s. We got into a discussion about the nuke carried by the Enola Gay -- they indicated it was not fully assembled or “armed” until after takeoff. The reason was fear of crashing on takeoff and taking out half of Tinian. After takeoff, two Navy weapons troops crawled back into the bomb bay and assembled the bomb. Basically, the Little Boy was a “gun-type” weapon and they loaded the explosive (cordite I think) into the breech – a few wires were swapped around and the bomb was armed. They did all of this before the 29’ climbed to altitude. TAZ [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/flag.gif[/img] [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/worship.gif[/img]