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. On 6 August 1945;; during the final stages of World War II; it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb.

The bomb; code-named 'Little Boy'; was targeted at the city of Hiroshima; Japan; and caused unprecedented destruction. Enola Gay participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki being bombed instead.