The great artist

Crew C-15: Front row: Dehart, Kuharek, Buckley, Gallagher, Spitzer; Standing: Olivi, Beahan, Charles Sweeney (pilot), Van Pelt, Albury

The Great Artiste was a Boeing B-29 - Bomber (USAAF serial 44-27353.) Of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces , which provided on 6 August 1945, scientific equipment the use of the Enola Gay , from which the first atomic bomb Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima ( Japan ). As a scientific observer, Luis Walter Alvarez, who later won the Nobel Prize in Physics, was on board for this mission.

Actually, that should The Great Artiste second use of the Fat-Man - nuclear bomb fly, but because you did not want to convert into another bomber, the devices that was team with the team of Bockscar exchanged by then the Fat Man atomic bomb on Was dropped on August 9, 1945 at 11:02 am.

Subsequently attached nose art

The original machine was scrapped in September 1949. A B-29 painted in the colors of the "Great Artiste" is on display at Whiteman Air Force Base .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Luis W. Alvarez, W. Peter Trower: Discovering Alvarez: selected works of Luis W. Alvarez, with commentary by his students and colleagues , University of Chicago Press, 1987, ISBN 0-226-81304-5 , p. 65