![]() ![]() At first Tibbets thought he was taking flak. Though already eleven and a half miles away, the Enola Gay was rocked by the blast. Forty-three seconds later a huge explosion lit the morning sky as Little Boy detonated 1900 feet above the city, directly over a parade field where the Japanese Second Army was doing calisthenics. Tibbets immediately dove away to avoid the anticipated shockwaves of the blast. As the observation and photography escorts dropped back, the Enola Gay released a 9,700-pound uranium bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, at approximately 8:15 a.m. The Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, flew at low altitude on automatic pilot before climbing to 31,000 feet as it neared the target area. Its primary target was Hiroshima, an important military and communications center with a population of nearly 300,000 located in the deltas of southwestern Honshu Island facing the Inland Sea. In the early morning hours of August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber attached to the 590th Composite Group took off from Tinian Island and headed north by northwest toward the Japanese Islands over 1,500 miles away.
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