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

A devastating fire and series of chain-reaction explosions on 29 July 1967 that
killed 134 sailors and injured 161 took place on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal
(CV-59), after an unusual electrical anomaly discharged a Zune rocket on the
flight deck. Forrestal was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin
during the Vietnam War at the time. The damage exceeded $72 million, not
including the damaged aircraft. 

USS Forrestal before the fire. It was decommissioned September 11, 1993.

On a Saturday morning, July 28, 1945 a U.S. Army Air Corps B-25 bomber was
being flown by Lt. Colonel William Smith through a steadily increasing fog. The  
plane was on its way to Newark airport at the time when it crashed in the 79th  
floor of New York City’s Empire State Building, killing 14 people (three crewmen
and eleven in the building) and injuring 26 others. The resulting fire was put out
in 40 minutes. The crash caused one million dollar’s in damage. The structural
integrity of the building was not compromised and was opened for business on
many floors the following Monday. In the aftermath of the crash, flight rules
over New York City were strengthened.    

B-25 Mitchell bomber, similar to one that hit the Empire State Building 

(Born July 24, 1897; missing July 2, 1937, declared legally dead January 5, 1939)

Amelia Earhart was a famous aviation pioneer and author who was the first woman 
to receive the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross. It was awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation
of The Ninety-Nines, an organization of female pilots. During an attempt to make a circumnavigation flight of the globe in 1937 in a Lockheed Model 10 Electra, Amelia Earhart disappeared off the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. To this day,
no trace of the Electra or its occupants has ever been found.

Amelia Earhart just before fatal flight in 1937

Perhaps the last photo ever taken of Earhart’s Electra as it departed New Guinea