Enola Gay and Building D

I return this weekend for my last class at Building "D" on Offutt Air Force Base, south of Omaha, Nebraska.

This class is conducted in the same building where a bomber called the "Enola Gay" was built and outfitted with the first nuclear weapon used against humans in combat. The huge former aircraft assembly plant now houses the US Air Force Weather command, classrooms, and many, many vehicles. No planes, though. It is an amazing place, and I feel privileged to teach graduate school in this place.

The history of what happened inside Building D during WW II is an important bit of Americana that is worth repeating here. The information that follows was gleaned from Offutt Air Force Base Pamphlet (OAFBP) 210-1 titled “History of Building D,” published in 1981 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of this edifice.

More than a year before Pearl Harbor, General of the Army Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold made an urgent recommendation that two new bomber factories be constructed, plus an additional one for fighters. The war in Europe had heated up and our rapidly evolving national policy now dictated that we begin serious production of high quality combat aircraft. Although not yet at war, we had already committed ourselves to provide war materials to our allies.

Omaha and Tulsa were chosen as sites for the bomber plants because of their locations deep inside our borders and thus judged safe, in the event that US cities would one day be subjected to the devastation that had so recently visited London. A contract was signed on 14 February 1941 awarding to the Glenn L. Martin Company of Baltimore the right to operate the Omaha plant. Ground-breaking ceremonies took place on the 3rd of March. We would not go to war for nine more months.

The speed with which the entire project proceeded was unprecedented in the annals of history and reflected the industrial might that at the time existed in our nation alone. A might that would inevitably relentlessly destroy the Axis Powers. Another testimony to our ability to mass produce the equipment of war in record amounts came from German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel who commented after the North African Campaign that, “The Americans were fantastically equipped.”

By March 1941 Martin had a letter of intent from the government to build 1,200 B-26 Marauders in Omaha. Preparation for construction of Building D redefined the phrase “whole-hearted cooperation.” With almost lightning speed, simultaneous preparations came together. The first batch of concrete was poured on 7 April 1941, and on the 18th of June, structural steel was being put in place. At the same time, Burlington Railroad was busy modifying a pool of its freight cars to haul the B-26’s large wings from assembly plants 750 miles away.

With Hitler threatening to invade Britain, construction continued seven days a week with three shifts of workers.

Available workers in Omaha were mainly farm workers, housewives, and meat packinghouse workers. An initial work force of approximately 8,500 had to be trained and ready for work before the plant was ready for production. By October 1941 Building D was 98 percent completed.

Limited production of some subassembly parts (small clamps for the Plexiglas nose where the bombardier would sit) began on New Years Day 1942 – less than ten months after Martin received the government’s letter of intent. However, necessary aircraft production tools were slow in arriving. By opening day only 50 percent of the required machine tools had been installed.

Full production began on 8 June 1942, fifteen months after the ground-breaking. The 6th plane off the production line on August 31 was the first B-26 accepted by the Army Air Corp. By mid-December 1942 the plant was meeting its production schedule. By 8 May 1943 Martin of Omaha had completed half of its production goal and by January 1945, the Martin-Nebraska Company had received three coveted Army-Navy “E” Production Awards for twenty-four consecutive months of on-schedule production. The “E” stood for excellence.

In mid-July 1943 it was announced that the Omaha plant had been chosen by the Army to build a brand new bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. This selection was based on Omaha’s enviable production record. Ground was broken the following month for construction of an additional 135,000 square feet to be added to the existing 1,200,000 square feet (twenty-five full-size football fields). The B-29 was a much larger air-frame.

The B-29 was one of our nation’s best kept military secrets whose sole purpose was to bomb the Japanese Empire.

While the plant tooled up for its next assignment, production of B-26s continued. By November 1943 the plant had completed the initial 1,200 Marauders, but additional orders kept this production line going for a while more. Production tapered off and on 4 April 1944 the last Omaha-built B-26 rolled off the line: the 1,585th B-29 Superfortress production began just two days later and the first B-29 was completed on May 24th, one month ahead of schedule. An astounding accomplishment.

By 15 June 1945, Martin-Nebraska had produced 402 Superfortresses and was soon awarded its fourth Army-Navy “E.” When production finally ceased on 18 September 1945 the plant had produced 531 B-29s. The full complement of war workers in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, about 12,000 to 15,000, were laid off within one month after Japan’s surrender.

“Enola Gay,” the B-29 that dropped the first A-bomb on Hiroshima, was built in Omaha. In the spring of 1945 Colonel P. W. Tibbetts, Jr., aircraft commander of the “Enola Gay” visited the Omaha Martin plant and brought along a mock-up of the “secret weapon.” Omaha assembled over twenty specially designed B-29s.

Quoting from the OAFBP 210-1, “Among the plant’s many records, one towers above the rest: the thirty-three consecutive months of on-schedule production. No other aircraft assembly plant in the nation even came close to the Martin-Nebraska record.”

During the Cold war that followed, Offutt AFB became the permanent home of the Strategic Air Command, AFGWC’s original sponsor. In mid-1959 Building D was remodeled and became a guided missile assembly plant for SAC’s new inventory of intercontinental missiles. This era ended in December 1965. Since then, Building D has housed many Air Force organizations.

The center of it’s spacious floor space was eventually housed the base motor pool. To this day, Building D still serves our country well. OAFBP 210-1 says of Building D, “within its walls the course of history was changed.”

I work here now, where we built and equipped a plane which killed more people in one stroke than ever before in human history. So, the next postings ask or try to answer a question: how should we feel about the Enola Gay?