The Enola Gay was a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that was used by the United States during World War II. It was named after the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, and was the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. The Enola Gay was part of the 509th Composite Group of the U.S. Army Air Forces and was the only aircraft to have ever dropped an atomic bomb in combat.