On September 9, 1942, a Japanese submarine was spotted cruising in an easterly direction raising its periscope occasionally as it neared the Oregon Coastline. Based
on the Sub was a small two passenger float plane (above). It’s mission; a test run to
start a devastating forest fire by dropping two 176 pound incendiary bombs. If they
were successful, Japan had hopes of attacking the eastern end of the Panama
Canal to slow down shipping from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

This event, which caused no damage, marked the only time during World War ll that
an enemy plane had dropped bombs on the U.S. mainland. A major fire had been
averted due to the fact the coastal fog, mist and heavy doses of Oregon rain made
the forests so wet they simply didn’t catch fire.

Fifty years later on 1992, the the Japanese pilot, Nobuo Fujita who survived the war, returned to Oregon to help dedicate a historical plaque (below) at the exact spot
where his two bombs had impacted. The elderly pilot then donated his ceremonial
sward as a gesture of peace and closure of the bombings of Oregon on that day
in 1942. Fujita would return to Brookings 3 more times before his death in 1997,
and the following year his daughter buried some of his ashes at the site of his
famous bombing.

Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita

Fujita is shown with his Yokosuka E14Y (Glen) float plane prior to his flight.

The Memorial Plaque located in Brookings, Oregon at the site of the 1942
bombing

Orville Wright along with his older brother Wilbur are credited with inventing
and building the world’s first successful airplane and making the first controlled,
powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903.

In the two years afterward, the brothers developed their invention into the first
practical fixed-wing aircraft.  Although not the first to build and fly experimental
aircraft, Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to invent aircraft controls that
made fixed-wing powered flight possible. On August 19, 1940 – The new Civil
Aeronautics Administration awarded honorary license #1 to Orville Wright.

Orville Wright’s famous first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903.

Orville Wright with his brother Wilbur

Humorist Will Rogers, left, and famed aviator Wiley Post, at the Renton
airport before their fatal Alaska trip.    

The crash site

Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Super fortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, mother of pilot Paul Tibbets  (shown below). On 6 August 1945 Tibbets and his flight
crew dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, thus leading to the end of the war.

Tibbets was just 29 years old at the time. The Enola Gay became the first aircraft to
drop an atomic bomb as a weapon of war. The plane, now housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum, has been restored, and Tibbets attended
the unveiling in 2003. 

                                     
                                   Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets

              (born February 23, 1915 – died November 1, 2007)

 Enola Gay on display in the Steven F. Udar-Hazy Center at the Smithsonian Museum 

The 393rd Bombardment Squadron crew of the B-29 Enola Gay. 

During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two
atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first
on August 6, 1945 and the second on August 9, 1945. For six months prior to the bombings, the United States fire-bombed 67 Japanese cities and  calling  for the surrender of Japan in a declaration issued on July 26, 1945. The Japanese
government ignored the ultimatum and by executive order of President Harry S.
Truman, the U.S. dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” (shown below) on the
city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed by the detonation of the
second atomic bomb, “Fat Man” over Nagasaki on August 9. Within the first two
to four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people
in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki,with roughly
half of the deaths in each city occurring on the first day. The Enola Gay (above)
dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.

The atomic bomb “Little Boy”

 
The explosion of “Little Boy”

Hiroshima after the bombing