Petersen hopes the Enola Gay hangar will be the centerpiece, with aircraft displays and a theater. The next step is to raise the necessary $5 million. With a $75,000 grant from the National Park Service, the airfield has recently drawn up a restoration plan. Pushing open the huge door of the rusting hangar that housed the Enola Gay and the other B-29s specially modified to carry out the atomic mission, Petersen described to me his “optimistic vision” for the site. They also carried out a series of experiments to refine the ballistics of the bombs and make sure their complex fusing electronics worked. In the skies over Wendover, the aircrews practiced over and over the maneuver Tibbets had devised to shield the planes from the blast of the A-bombs-a 155-degree diving turn immediately after releasing the bomb. None were ever let in on the secret of what the mission was, though at least a few who had science backgrounds guessed it had something to do with atomic energy.
So did the ground crews who assembled the bombs. Tibbets’s crews trained relentlessly at Wendover.
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