"The end of the world, perfect." That's what Colonel Paul Tibbets said when he first saw the airfield on the Utah salt flats in September 1944. Three months later he activated the 509th Composite Group on its runway. Eight months after that, his crew dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
A Pirep featured story · KENV Wendover, Wendover, UT
Wendover sat on the Utah-Nevada border, 125 miles west of Salt Lake City, on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats. Congress funded an airfield there in 1940 because the area was empty, flat, and the weather was clear — ideal for bombing and gunnery practice. The base was activated in 1942 as a heavy bomber training school. Twenty-one bomb groups passed through it during the first half of the war, including the 100th Bomb Group (the famous "Bloody Hundredth" of the Eighth Air Force) and the 308th of the Flying Tigers, which flew over the Hump in the China-Burma-India theater. At its WWII peak Wendover had 17,500 military and 2,000 civilians on station — a city in the salt flats with its own movie theater, bowling alley, hospital, and power plant.
On September 1, 1944, a 29-year-old Air Force pilot named Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. was given an assignment that "might shorten the war": form and command a combat group capable of delivering a new kind of weapon by airplane. He was briefed on the Manhattan Project later that month. His first job was to find a base remote enough that no one would notice what was happening. He toured Wendover, looked at the salt flats, and said, "The end of the world, perfect."
On December 17, 1944 — the forty-first anniversary of Kitty Hawk — the 509th Composite Group was officially activated at Wendover. Code name: Kingman. Project W-47. The unit had 1,800 men, 15 specially modified "Silverplate" B-29 Superfortresses (heavier armor and turrets stripped out, special bomb bays with pneumatic doors, reversible-pitch propellers), and a flight test program built around dropping high-explosive "pumpkin bombs" shaped like the actual Fat Man and Little Boy weapons. Pilots learned to release a 9,000-pound bomb from 30,000 feet and bank into a 155-degree turn to put eight miles between themselves and the blast. They practiced for five months.
Security was absolute. Signs on the base read: "What you see here, What you do here, What you hear here, Let it stay here." Most of the 1,800 men in the 509th did not know what they were practicing for. Tibbets named the lead B-29 after his mother — Enola Gay Tibbets. The 509th deployed to Tinian Island in May 1945. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima. On August 9, Bockscar dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki. The war ended six days later.
The airfield was decommissioned in 1969 and turned over to civilian control. Today KENV is a public airport with a 7,000-foot runway and minimal commercial service. The Historic Wendover Airfield Foundation has been restoring the WWII buildings since 2001. The Enola Gay hangar still stands. A miniature bronze replica of the Enola Gay sits atop a 1990 monument at the airport entrance. The Enola Gay itself is at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Center near Dulles. Bockscar is at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson.