Just over 40 seconds later it detonated at an altitude of around 2,000 feet above the city with the energy of around 15 kilotons of TNT, heralding in a new and devastating era of warfare. Tibbets guided the plane, named after his mother Enola Gay, from Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean towards its intended target – the Japanese city of Hiroshima.Īt 33,000 feet, the bomb was released. In the early hours of 6 August 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbets climbed aboard a B-29 Superfortress bomber loaded with a 10,000-pound atomic bomb nicknamed 'Little Boy'.