Originally published in the September/October 2015 issue of World War II magazine. It was first flown in 1942 and soon became popular in the Pacific theatre during World War II. Air Force photograph The B-29 (also called Superfortress) was a four-engine heavy bomber that was built by Boeing. The elder Lewis gave the artifacts on these pages to Steven they went up for sale last April at New York’s Bonhams auction house, where the collection brought in $112,000, and offered a revealing look at one man’s war story. Tibbets, Jr., pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. “He would place items on the dining room table and then we would spend most of our day together discussing them in detail,” Lewis’s youngest son, Steven, recalled. The pilot’s position is on the other side of the bulkhead. Navigator Dutch van Kirk’s position in Enola Gay. Lewis, later a settled family man with five children, spent a lifetime reflecting on the mission. Left to right, pilot Paul Tibbets’ and bombardier Tom Ferebee’s positions in Enola Gay. Tibbets, selected Lewis to join him in a combat force-the 509th Composite Group-training in secret to use the bomber to deliver a weapon of unprecedented power. Another pilot in the B-29 program, Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Lewis had enlisted in the Army Air Corps early in the war electronics experience got him a gig testing weapons systems on a bomber under development, the B-29 Superfortress. In August 1945 the confident and rambunctious Lewis was 27, with sturdy, all-American good looks and a reputation as a skilled pilot and determined ladies’ man.
Lewis wrote shortly after the B-29 he was copiloting, the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. IF I LIVE A HUNDRED YEARS, I’ll never quite get these few minutes out of my mind,” Robert A. Enola Gay: Pilot's-eye View | HistoryNet Close