ClassicCar

esfoder

I was reading an article this week end and it said the Enloa Gay was a Hudson. At least made by the Hudson car company?

Who would have thunk it???

Dusty

Browniepetersen

The Enloa Gay is parked just a few miles from my home at the Hill Air Force Base display. Give me some identifiers to look for and I will run out and take some photo's. The Training for the crew's was completed at Wendover Air Force Base, Utah and they completed their final briefings and departed from Hill Air Force Base for the mission. Most of the remaining artifacts from Wendover Air Force Base were moved to Hill AFB when the base chapel and aircraft were located there.

Hudzilla

esfoder wrote:

I was reading an article this week end and it said the Enloa Gay was a Hudson. At least made by the Hudson car company?

Who would have thunk it???

Dusty

Dusty actually the fuselage, bulkheads and outter wings were all produced by Hudson for the B 29. You can read about it in Don Butler's book. Hudson's war effort was very impressive.

Kevin C.

Browniepetersen wrote:

The Enloa Gay is parked just a few miles from my home at the Hill Air Force Base display.

Somebody might want to tell the folks at the National Air and Space Museum at the Udvar-Hazy Center about that! :rolleyes:

Kevin C.

I'm really looking forward to taking the tour of that place again!

Browniepetersen

OK, I will put on a pot of Crow and drive out to the base and see what I thought I saw. Been a while since I was there so it is good that I go again.

It has been way too long since I was there. They have a lot of stuff from the old Wendover Field but what they don't have is the Enloa Gay. Also, I thought that the chapel they had was from Wendover. It is not, it is the original one-room Hill Field chapel that has been restored. It does have a nice stained glass window that is a copy from a chapel at the squadron's sister base in England. They do have a "clone" from the original Adam Bomb. And, I have the memories of a few TDY's at Wendover Field when I was with the 419th TFW doing "Bare Base Assignments and Chemical Warfare Training." Anyway, lunch today is Crow. It should be quite good because I have made it into a "Blackbird" pie. I have found Crow tastes best that way.

esfoder

Yeah I was sittin in the head reading a Hemmings classic car mag. It had a article about Hudson and it mentioned it. Thought I would ask around.

I like trivia

Dusty

Uncle Josh

George Staley, donator of many of the cars in the

http://www.classiccarmuseum.org/index.php

worked on the engines of the Enola Gay etc and got enamoured with air-cooled engines.

The museum is located in Norwich, NY, where my 52 Hornet was on display last year.

In addition to a rotating yearly display, they have several aircraft engines, including the B29 (28 cyl I believe. What a plumber's nightmare), the largest collection of Franklins in the world, built just a few miles from there in Syracuse, NY, a 47 Hudson Cv., an Essex, a Deusey etc.

If you're ever in the area don't miss it.

George is still very active, lives not far from there and has a full restoration shop on his farm.

WildWasp

Great place to visit. As UJ says the largest collection of Franklin Autos anywhere. The rest of the cars are first rate too. Spent over 4 hours there one day. Saw lots of fine cars and met some really super car folks too. Worth going out of your way to visit!

Hudson308

Browniepetersen wrote:

OK, I will put on a pot of Crow and drive out to the base and see what I thought I saw. Been a while since I was there so it is good that I go again.

It has been way too long since I was there. They have a lot of stuff from the old Wendover Field but what they don't have is the Enloa Gay. Also, I thought that the chapel they had was from Wendover. It is not, it is the original one-room Hill Field chapel that has been restored. It does have a nice stained glass window that is a copy from a chapel at the squadron's sister base in England. They do have a "clone" from the original Adam Bomb. And, I have the memories of a few TDY's at Wendover Field when I was with the 419th TFW doing "Bare Base Assignments and Chemical Warfare Training." Anyway, lunch today is Crow. It should be quite good because I have made it into a "Blackbird" pie. I have found Crow tastes best that way.

Brownie;

Is it possible they've got "Bock's Car" over at Hill? Don't remember off hand whether that one survives. I'd heard that the Air & Space museum only has a fuselage section of the Enola Gay.

P.S.- you promised pictures!

Hudson308

Guess not... it's at Wright-Patterson.

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=527

R3350's had two rows of 9 cylinders each (18 total)

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=865

Browniepetersen

The B29 that they have in the Hill collection has the name of one of our local business men on the side. I understand it was a plane that he flew and he located it, purchased it and paid for the restoration. That is the way that Hill gets a lot of their aircraft. They have the "clone" Adam Bomb next to the B29 and a small display about the droping of the two bombs. They have a few pictures of the training at Wendover and stuff. Hill's big claim to fame is fighter aircraft.

Hudson308

Browniepetersen wrote:

The B29 that they have in the Hill collection has the name of one of our local business men on the side. I understand it was a plane that he flew and he located it, purchased it and paid for the restoration. That is the way that Hill gets a lot of their aircraft. They have the "clone" Adam Bomb next to the B29 and a small display about the droping of the two bombs. They have a few pictures of the training at Wendover and stuff. Hill's big claim to fame is fighter aircraft.

Glad to see any surviving aircraft of that type, especially restored.

You may have seen the PBS special about the guys who found a '29 on the ice somewhere in Greenland. Spent a year or two fixing her up enough to fly out, only to have an auxiliary generator tip over in the tail and start a fire. Fortunately, they were just taxiing at that point. They all got out and set lawn chairs up to watch her burn to the snow. The one guy who overhauled the engines and props basically worked himself to death in the cold.

Another interesting B-29 story is the development of the Russian Tu-4, an exact copy of the B-29 made by "reverse engineering" three American B-29's interred in Russia after missions over Japan. At the time the B-29 was the most advanced strategic bomber in the world, and the only one that could hoist the heft of those early atom bombs high enough to deliver 'em and escape the blast. The Russians took one B-29 apart and copied it piece-by-piece, used the second one as a static prototype and the third for training their pilots to fly them. The only parts they couldn't make themselves were the tires... they had to buy those from us, war surplus.

ralpie

Brownie... you posted that you "live outside the gate" of Hill? I have fond memories of being stationed at Hill. At that time the Big Depot repair facilities did not exist and the flying was being done mostly by converted bombers. Being stationed there did not mean I was there... most of the time I was on a C119 following one or more squadons of the planes to thier staging point and on to the next one. over 300 days of TDY one year. Got to see S. America, Canada, Alaska, Carribean Isles and many of these continental 48 states. Hill being an Air Defense Command base described our mission. Did get to do some skiing one winter... I believe the place was called Snow Basin? Eden Utah? Over 30 years later my oldest son moved to Park City and learned to ski. He was in Utah four years and loved it. Most folks do not realize that Wendover was there in the middle of what is the US Army Dugway proving grounds.... but then again the USA was the owner of the aircraft that we are talking about ... USAF came along post war.... 1947. Cheers to a fellow retiree.

66patrick66

The Enola Gay --- From the Smithsonian Museum web page:

Enola Gay

This exhibition, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, told the story of the role of the Enola Gay in securing Japanese surrender. It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. The components on display included two engines, the vertical stabilizer, an aileron, propellers, and the forward fuselage that contains the bomb bay.

A video presentation about the Enola Gay's mission included interviews with the crew before and after the mission including mission pilot Col. Paul Tibbets. The exhibition text summarized the history and development of the Boeing B-29 fleet used in bombing raids against Japan.

Another portion of the exhibit detailed the painstaking efforts of Smithsonian aircraft restoration specialists who had spent more than a decade restoring parts of the Enola Gay for this exhibition. Museum specialists continued to restore the remaining components of the airplane, and after an additional nine years the fully assembled Enola Gay went on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museumâ€™s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in December 2003.

This exhibition was on display in Gallery 103 from June 28, 1995 to May 17, 1998

One of the Enola Gay's propellers was on a static display stand at the airpark atTinker AFB, Oklahoma for several years, until the restoration began in earnest, then it was removed and taken to DC for the project.

ClassicCar

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

We'd love to hear from you! info@classiccar.com