(The airport, which gets daily casino-chartered flights and private aircraft, uses the old airfield's runways. 'The people that were here had no idea what they were working on,' says Sandy resident Jim Petersen, president of the Historic Wendover Airfield Foundation and director of aviation for Tooele County and Wendover Airport. Paul Tibbets, the 509th's commander - knew the truth about that mission in the months the airmen were assembling and testing components, and dropping 150 bomb prototypes over the West Desert and California's Salton Sea. However, I believe that the Enola Gay was the beginning of the end to the war in the Pacific. I know that many say the end to the war with Japan concluded in Tokyo Harbor aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
Up to 17,000 trained at Wendover at its peak, dwarfing what had been a railroad stop on the edge of Utah's West Desert.įewer than 4,000 airmen were training here, though, by the time the unit that would become Wendover's most famous gathered in spring 1945 - the 509th Composite Group with a super-secret mission. I wish we had not lived in a world where an Enola Gay existed, but given all the events in the Pacific, it needed to exist. Thousands of airmen learned to fly heavy bombers during World War II at Wendover Army Air Base, which was authorized by a Congress anticipating war and became a sprawling base with 668 buildings after the Dec.