Enola Gay (1945). This now infamous Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, one of 65 modified to carry atomic weapons, was named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of its pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets, who hand-picked the aircraft from the assembly line at Glenn L. Martin Company (now Lockheed Martin) in Omaha, Nebraska. On August 6, 1945, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The bomb (“Little Boy”), targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, caused unprecedented destruction.