![enola gay hanger wendover enola gay hanger wendover](https://live.staticflickr.com/5762/21008935140_1b6d567e5d_b.jpg)
With the entrance of the United States into World War II, Wendover Field took on greater importance. The first military contingent arrived on 12 August 1941, to construct targets on the gunnery range. To provide water, a pipeline was run (1943) from a spring on Pilot Peak (Nevada) to the base. The gunnery range was 86 miles (138 km) long and 18–36 miles (29–58 km) wide. By that time a total of 1,822,000 acres (737,300 hectare) had been acquired for the base and associated gunnery/bombing range. Wendover Air Base became a subpost of Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City on 29 July 1941. By the end of 1941, Wendover airfield had been expanded with additional buildings and paved runways. There were also some warehouses, a theater, a medical facility, and a few other buildings located on the airfield. Facilities were Spartan, with a few barracks, officer quarters, and a mess hall. The first military personnel arrived in August 1941. Though isolated, the area was served by the Western Pacific Railroad, and many of its citizens were employed by the railroad.Ĭonstruction of the base and ranges began in September–November 1940. The area near the town of Wendover was well-suited to these needs the land was virtually uninhabited, had generally excellent flying weather, and the nearest large city (Salt Lake City) was 100 miles (160 km) away (Wendover had around 100 citizens at the time). Wendover Air Force Base's history began in 1940, when the United States Army began looking for additional bombing ranges. A portion of the original bombing range is now the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) which is used extensively by the Air Force with live fire targets on the range. Tooele County assumed ownership of the airport and base buildings in 1998, and the County continues to operate the airfield as a public airport. It was closed by the Air Force in 1969, and the base was given to Wendover City in 1977. Īfter the war, Wendover was used for training exercises, gunnery range and as a research facility. In 2009, a hangar at the base dubbed The Manhattan Project's Enola Gay Hangar was listed as one of the most endangered historic sites in the U.S. It was the training site of the 509th Composite Group, the B-29 unit that dropped the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
![enola gay hanger wendover enola gay hanger wendover](http://photos.wikimapia.org/p/00/06/33/03/04_big.jpg)
During World War II it was a training base for B-17 and B-24 bomber crews.
![enola gay hanger wendover enola gay hanger wendover](https://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/wp-content/uploads/iblog/B29.jpg)
Wendover Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Utah now known as Wendover Airport. Lua error in Module:Location_map at line 510: Unable to find the specified location map definition: "Module:Location map/data/Utah" does not exist.Īrmy Airfield/Bombing Range/Test and Development B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay" and its crew, trained at Wendover Field.