Wendover, Utah: The Railroad Town That Trained the Enola Gay Crew

The Western Pacific Railroad founded Wendover in nineteen oh seven or eight as a water stop on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats. Water had to be piped in from springs near Pilot Peak because nothing else for a hundred miles on the main line could supply the locomotives. The town may be named for a Western Pacific surveyor named Charles Wendover.

Then came the war. Beginning in nineteen forty-four, the Wendover Army Air Field became the classified training base for the five-oh-ninth Composite Group under Colonel Paul Tibbets. The crews trained here with practice bombs over the salt flats, rehearsing the mission in secret.

On August sixth, nineteen forty-five, Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima and released Little Boy. Three days later a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. The crew that ended the Pacific war trained in this Utah desert town.

The historic airfield museum stands today on the Utah side, preserving the hangar where the Enola Gay was maintained.