Henry Eugene "Red" Erwin, Sr. is a recipient of the Medal of Honor which he earned aboard a heavy bomber whose design exceeded the cost of what?
Henry E. Erwin Henry Eugene "Red" Erwin, Sr., (May 8, 1921 – January 16, 2002) was a United States Army Air Forces airman and a recipient of the U.S. military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions in World War II. He earned the award as a staff sergeant and radio operator aboard a B-29 Superfortress in the Asia-Pacific theater. During a 1945 bombing mission over Koriyama, Japan, a white phosphorus bomb prematurely ignited in his aircraft and seriously wounded him. As smoke filled the plane, he picked up the burning device and carried it through the aircraft to the cockpit where he tossed it out a window. Although he suffered severe burns, he successfully saved his plane and all crew members aboard by disposing of the incendiary/smoke-generating bomb.
Enola Gay The Enola Gay ( ) 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. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused unprecedented destruction. "Enola Gay" participated in the second atomic attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in a secondary target, Nagasaki, being bombed instead.