This 1998 hardback has been flat signed by the Hiroshima atomic bomb pilot Paul Tibbets. It has been enhanced with an original pencil portrait drawing of Tibbets by Steve Teasdale. The book is in excellent condition. On 5 August 1945, Tibbets formally named his B-29 Enola Gay after his mother. Enola Gay, serial number 4486292, had been personally selected by him, on recommendation of a civilian production supervisor, while it was still on the assembly line at the Glenn L. Martin Company plant in Bellevue, Nebraska. The regularly assigned aircraft commander, Robert A. Lewis, was unhappy to be displaced by Tibbets for this important mission, and became furious when he arrived at the airfield on the morning of 6 August to see the aircraft he considered his painted with the now-famous nose art. Lewis would fly the mission as Tibbets's co-pilot.
At 02:45 the next day—in accordance with the terms of Operations Order No. 35—the Enola Gay departed North Field for Hiroshima, Japan, with Tibbets at the controls. Tinian was approximately 2,000 miles (3,200 km) away from Japan, so it took six hours to reach Hiroshima. The atomic bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was dropped over Hiroshima at 08:15 local time. Tibbets recalled that the city was covered with a tall mushroom cloud after the bomb was dropped.