Up An' Atom
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Up An' Atom was the name of a B-29 Superfortress (B-29-36-MO 44-27304, victor number 88) configured during World War II in the Silverplate project to carry an atomic bomb.
Assigned to the 393rd Bomb Squadron, 509th Composite Group, it was built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Plant at Omaha, Nebraska, and accepted by the Army Air Forces on April 3, 1945, and flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, by its assigned crew B-10 (Capt. George W. Marquardt, Aircraft Commander). It departed Wendover for Tinian on June 11 and arrived on June 17. There it was assigned victor number 8, but that was changed for security reasons to victor 88 on August 1. It was named and had its nose art painted after the Nagasaki mission. The name is a word play on the colloquial idiom "Up and at them", meaning "There is a lot of work to be done," and referencing the unit's atomic mission.
After World War II it served with the 509th until 1949, when it was transferred to the 97th Bomb Wing at Biggs Air Force Base, Texas. Up An' Atom was re-configured as a TB-29 trainer in April 1950 and was dropped from the Air Force inventory in November 1956. It was transferred to the U.S. Navy and used as a target at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, California.
Two FB-111A strategic bombers of the USAF 509th Bomb Wing, serials 68-0269 and 68-0272, carried the name and original nose art of Up An' Atom on their nosewheel doors while based at Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire, in the 1970s and 1980s.
[edit] Sources
- Campbell, Richard H., The Silverplate Bombers: A History and Registry of the Enola Gay and Other B-29s Configured to Carry Atomic Bombs (2005), ISBN 0-7864-2139-8
- Manhattan Project 509CG Page
