“Every window was broken, the roof was either totally blown off or patched and leaking,” he said. When Petersen first visited the hangar in 2000, he saw history in ruins. In 2009, the building known as the Enola Gay Hangar was added to the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of the nation’s most endangered historic places. 6, 1945, the aircraft dropped on Hiroshima the device code-named “Little Boy,” a 10,000-pound uranium-235 bomb whose explosive force killed or severely injured 140,000 people on the ground below.įor years, the isolated old airfield - set on the parched salt flats of western Utah, 360 miles north of Las Vegas - fell into disrepair, its barracks, hospital, control tower, nurses quarters and hangars all crumbling. The hangar where Petersen stands once served the Enola Gay - the plane known as the first aircraft to unleash an atomic bomb in warfare - and its crew.Īt 8:15 a.m. It was also the training site of the 509th Composite Group, the B-29 unit that dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end the war. “But this hangar has the most compelling history of all, because it played a vital role in the Manhattan Project.”ĭuring World War II, Wendover’s airfield served as a domestic base for the elite B-17 and B-24 bomber crews. “This entire base has national significance,” he says proudly.