The 509th: How a Secret Bomb Group Trained at Albuquerque

In December 1944, the 509th Composite Group activated under Colonel Paul Tibbets at Wendover Army Air Field in Utah and conducted final training at Kirtland Army Air Field — today's KABQ Sunport south side. Their mission was secret even from most of their own crews: deliver atomic weapons. The bombs themselves were assembled 220 miles north at Los Alamos by the Manhattan Project. The casings, mechanisms, and ballistic shapes were tested at Kirtland and Wendover. Crews practiced "approach, drop, escape" maneuvers for an unusual heavy-bomb release that required immediate 155-degree banking turns to outrun the blast. On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 AM, the world's first atomic detonation lit the Tularosa Basin at the Trinity Site, 60 nautical miles south of Kirtland — a 21-kiloton plutonium implosion test of the Gadget device. Three weeks later, on August 6, the 509th's B-29 Enola Gay (built by the Glenn L. Martin plant on what is now KOFF Offutt) dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima. Three days after that, Bockscar dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. The war ended August 15. Today the original Kirtland flight line and 1940 control tower still stand inside the active military perimeter. The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History sits just outside the gate. The history is hard to walk through. It's also genuinely important. Trinity Site itself opens to the public only twice a year — first Saturdays of April and October — for Army-led tours.