Enola Gay
Birch supervised the manufacture of the Little Boy, and went to Tinian to supervise its assembly and loading it onto "Enola Gay", the Boeing B-29 Superfortress tasked with dropping the bomb. He devised the 'double plug' system that allowed for actually arming the bomb after "Enola Gay" took off so that if it crashed, there would not be a nuclear explosion. He was awarded the Legion of Merit. His citation read: