Little Boy was dropped by a plane piloted by a robot.
The Enola Gay ( [ pronᵻˈnoʊlə_ˈɡeɪ ] ) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber , named for Enola Gay Tibbets , the mother of the pilot , Colonel Paul Tibbets , who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line . `` Little Boy '' was the codename for the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 during World War II by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay , piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets , Jr. , commander of the 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces . Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. ( 23 February 1915 -- 1 November 2007 ) was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force . He is best known as the pilot who flew the Enola Gay ( named after his mother ) when it dropped Little Boy , the first of two atomic bombs used in warfare , on the Japanese city of Hiroshima .