On April 28, the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Manhattan Project’s Enola Gay hangar at Wendover Airfield one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. The hangar housed the “Enola Gay,” the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima.
Located in Wendover, UT, Wendover Airfield was a training base for the Army Air Corps with a major role in the Manhattan Project, the top-secret effort to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. Here, the 509th Composite Group trained for their top-secret mission to drop the world’s first atomic bombs over Japan. The repeated testing that took place at Wendover with over 155 prototype weapons was essential to the success of the entire project. However, the B-29 “Enola Gay” hangar and most of the other important World War II structures are in a critical state of disrepair. It may require an estimated $5 million to $6 million to restore it as a museum.