On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line. National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Colonel Paul Tibbets waving from Enola Gay's cockpit before taking off for the bombing of Hiroshima
