Enola Gay

A post elsewhere reminds me that this is a good time to post this, between the anniversaries of the two atomic bombings. Sorry you don't get the tune and the rich voice here, but even so you may think of this song whenever you see a warplane flying, as I do:

Enola Gay
from
Liner notes and songs from the U. Utah Phillips album El Capitan

Enola Gay
During the war years my father was stationed with the Army Air Corps at Wright- Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio. We lived in a co-op village called Greenmont. Our school was close to the field, where a great deal of research was done on experimental aircraft. As children we saw the first P-38s, B-29s and those abortive Flying Wings featured in Popular Mechanix during the late 1940s. When planes took off from Wright-Pat, they flew low over Greenmont, and the kids playing in the schoolyard would jump up and down and wave. If the pilot was looking down, he would dip his wing. What a feeling-to have a whole airplane dip its wing to you!
When we moved to Utah in 1947 I learned about another plane which flew its training missions over Salt Lake City. The plane was named Enola Gay and it was based at Wendover, Utah, a secret Air Force base on the Nevada line out in the Salt Flats. Enola Gay was commanded by Claude Tibbetts, who named the plane for his mother. Her sister ship was called Bock's Car and was flown, if my memory serves me correctly, by Kermit Behan. I often wondered if kids in the Salt Lake playgrounds used to wave at these planes the way that we did back in Dayton. With their training completed, the two aircraft, both B-29s, flew from Wendover to Tinian Island in the Marianas. On August 6,1945, Enola Gay took off from Tinian and dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. On August 9th, Bock's Car dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. These recollections have come together to make this song.
As we strive to maintain the balance of terror in the world, it is useful to remember just who is afraid of whom. Through the cold war, the arms race and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, one fact looms largest: there is only one country which has proven irrevocably that it has the will to use an atomic bomb in warfare. Guess who.

Enola Gay
Look out, look out from your schoolroom window,
Look up young children from your play,
Wave your hand at the shining airplane
Such a beautiful sight is Enola Gay.

It's many a mile from the Utah desert,
To Tinian Island far away,
Standing guard by the barbed wire fences
That hide the secret of Enola Gay.

High above the clouds in the sunlit silence,
So peaceful here, I'd like to stay,
But there's many a pilot who would swap his pension
For a chance to fly Enola Gay.

What is that sound high above my city?
I rush outside and search the sky.
Now we are running to find the shelter.
The air raid sirens start to cry.

What will I say when my children ask me
Where was I flying upon that day?
With trembling voice I gave the order
To the bombardier of Enola Gay.

Look out, look out from your schoolroom window,
Look up, young children from your play,
Your bright young eyes will turn to ashes
In the blinding light of Enola Gay.

I turn to see the fireball rising,
"My God, My God" all I can say,
I hear a voice within me crying,
My mother's name was Enola Gay.

Look out, look out from your schoolroom window,
Look up, young children from your play;
When you see those war planes flying,
Each one is named Enola Gay.