Bockscar Bockscar , sometimes called Bock ' s Car , is the name of the United States Army Air Forces B - 29 bomber that dropped the Fat Man nuclear weapon over the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the second atomic bombing of World War II . One of 15 Silverplate B - 29s used by the 509th , " Bockscar " was built at the Glenn L . Martin Aircraft Plant at Bellevue , Nebraska at what is now Offutt Air Force Base , and delivered to the United States Army Air Forces on 19 March 1945 . It was assigned to the 393d Bombardment Squadron , 509th Composite Group to Wendover Army Air Field , Utah in April . " Bockscar " was used in 13 training and practice missions from Tinian , and three combat missions in which it dropped pumpkin bomb s on industrial targets in Japan . On 9 August 1945 , " Bockscar " , piloted by the 393d Bombardment Squadron ' s commander , Major Charles W . Sweeney , dropped the Fat Man nuclear bomb with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT over the city of Nagasaki . About 44 % of the city was destroyed ; 35 , 000 people were killed and 60 , 000 injured . After the war , " Bockscar " returned to the United States in November 1945 . In September 1946 it was given to the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright - Patterson Air Force Base , Ohio . The aircraft was flown to the Museum on 26 September 1961 , and its original markings were restored . " Bockscar " is now on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force , Dayton , Ohio next to a replica of the Fat Man . Airplane history . " Bockscar " , B - 29 - 36 - MO 44 - 27297 , Victor number 77 , was assigned to the 393d Bombardment Squadron of the 509th Composite Group . One of 15 Silverplate B - 29s used by the 509th , " Bockscar " was built at the Glenn L . Martin Aircraft Plant at Bellevue , Nebraska at what is now Offutt Air Force Base , as a Block 35 aircraft . It was one of 10 modified as a Silverplate and re - designated " Block 36 " . Silverplate involved extensive modifications to the B - 29 to carry nuclear weapons . The bomb bay doors and the fuselage section between the bomb bays were removed to create a single bomb bay . British suspensions and bracing were attached for both shape types , with the gun - type suspension anchored in the aft bomb bay and the implosion type mounted in the forward bay . Weight reduction was also accomplished by removal of gun turrets and armor plating . These B - 29s also had an improved engine , the R - 3350 - 41 . The Silverplate aircraft represented a significant increase in performance over the standard variants . Delivered to the United States Army Air Forces on 19 March 1945 , " Bockscar " was assigned to Captain Frederick C . Bock and crew C - 13 , and flown to Wendover Army Air Field , Utah in April . The name chosen for the aircraft , and painted on it after the mission , was a pun on the name of the aircraft commander . It left Wendover on 11 June 1945 for Tinian , where it arrived 16 June . It was originally given the Victor ( unit - assigned identification ) number 7 but on 1 August was given the triangle N tail markings of the 444th Bombardment Group as a security measure , and had its Victor changed to 77 to avoid misidentification with an actual 444th aircraft . " Bockscar " was used in 13 training and practice missions from Tinian , and three combat missions in which it dropped pumpkin bomb s on industrial targets in Japan , in which Bock ' s crew bombed Niihama and Musashino , and First Lieutenant Charles Donald Albury and crew C - 15 bombed Koromo . Atomic bomb mission . Mission and crew . " Bockscar " was flown on 9 August 1945 , by the crew of another B - 29 , " The Great Artiste " , and piloted by Major Charles W . Sweeney , commander of the 393d Bombardment Squadron . The plane was co - piloted by First Lieutenant Charles Donald Albury , the normal aircraft commander of Crew C - 15 . " The Great Artiste " was designated as the observation , instrumentation support plane for the second mission , and another B - 29 , " The Big Stink " , flown by Group Operations Officer Major James I . Hopkins , Jr . , as the photographic aircraft . The mission had as its primary target the city of Kokura , where the Kokura Arsenal was located . Its secondary target was Nagasaki , where two large Mitsubishi armament plants were located . " Bockscar " had been flown by Sweeney and crew C - 15 in three test drop rehearsals of inert Fat Man assemblies in the eight days leading up to the second mission , including the final rehearsal the day before . " The Great Artiste " , which was the assigned aircraft of the crew with whom Sweeney most often flew , had been designated in preliminary planning to drop the second bomb , but the aircraft had been fitted with observation instruments for the Hiroshima mission . Moving the instrumentation from " The Great Artiste " to " Bockscar " would have been a complex and time - consuming process , and when the second atomic bomb mission was moved up from 11 August to 9 August because of adverse weather forecasts , the crews of " The Great Artiste " and " Bockscar " instead exchanged aircraft . The result was that the bomb was carried by " Bockscar " , but flown by the crew C - 15 of " The Great Artiste " . Kokura and Nagasaki . During pre - flight inspection of " Bockscar " , the flight engineer notified Sweeney that an inoperative fuel transfer pump made it impossible to use of fuel carried in a reserve tank . This fuel would still have to be carried all the way to Japan and back , consuming still more fuel . Replacing the pump would take hours ; moving the Fat Man to another aircraft might take just as long and was dangerous as well , as the bomb was live . Group Commander Colonel Paul Tibbets and Sweeney therefore elected to have " Bockscar " continue the mission . " Bockscar " took off from Tinian ' s North Field at 03 : 49 . The mission profile directed the B - 29s to fly individually to the rendezvous point , changed because of bad weather from Iwo Jima to Yakushima Island , and at cruising altitude instead of the customary , increasing fuel consumption . " Bockscar " began its climb to the bombing altitude a half hour before rendezvous . Before the mission , Tibbets had warned Sweeney to take no more than fifteen minutes at the rendezvous before proceeding to the target . Bockscar reached the rendezvous point and assembled with " The Great Artiste " , but after circling for some time , " The Big Stink " failed to appear . As they orbited Yakushima , the weather planes " Enola Gay " and " Laggin ' Dragon " reported both Kokura and Nagasaki within the accepted parameters for the required visual attack . Though ordered not to circle longer than fifteen minutes , Sweeney continued to wait for " The Big Stink " , at the urging of Commander Frederick Ashworth , the plane ' s weaponeer , who was in command of the mission . After exceeding the original departure time limit by a half hour , " Bockscar " , accompanied by " The Great Artiste " , proceeded to Kokura , thirty minutes away . The delay at the rendezvous had resulted in clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B - 29s on nearby Yawata the previous day covering 70 % of the area over Kokura , obscuring the aiming point . Three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes , burning fuel and exposing the aircraft repeatedly to the heavy defenses of Yawata , but the bombardier was unable to drop visually . By the time of the third bomb run , Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close , and Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser , who was monitoring Japanese communications , reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands . The increasingly critical fuel shortage resulted in the decision by Sweeney and Ashworth to reduce power to conserve fuel and divert to the secondary target , Nagasaki . The approach to Nagasaki twenty minutes later indicated that the heart of the city ' s downtown was also covered by dense cloud . Ashworth decided to bomb Nagasaki using radar , but , according to " Bockscar ' s " bombardier , Captain Kermit Beahan , a small opening in the clouds at the end of the three - minute bomb run permitted him to identify target features . " Bockscar " visually dropped " Fat Man " at 10 : 58 local time . It exploded 43 seconds later with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of , approximately northwest of the planned aiming point . The failure to drop " Fat Man " at the precise bomb aim point caused the atomic blast to be confined to the Urakami Valley . As a consequence , a major portion of the city was protected by the intervening hills , but even so , The Fat Man was dropped over the city ' s industrial valley midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi - Urakami Ordnance Works in the north . The resulting explosion had a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT , roughly the same as the Trinity blast . About 44 % of the city was destroyed ; 35 , 000 people were killed and 60 , 000 injured . Landing and debriefing . Because of the delays in the mission and the inoperative fuel transfer pump , the B - 29 did not have sufficient fuel to reach the emergency landing field at Iwo Jima , so Sweeney flew the aircraft to Okinawa . Arriving there , he circled for 20 minutes trying to contact the control tower for landing clearance , finally concluding that his radio was faulty . Critically low on fuel , " Bockscar " barely made it to the runway on Okinawa ' s Yontan Airfield . With only enough fuel for one landing attempt , Sweeney and Albury brought " Bockscar " in at instead of the normal , firing distress flares to alert the field of the uncleared landing . The number two engine died from fuel starvation as " Bockscar " began its final approach . Touching the runway hard , the heavy B - 29 slewed left and towards a row of parked B - 24 bombers before the pilots managed to regain control . The B - 29 ' s reversible propellers were insufficient to slow the aircraft adequately , and with both pilots standing on the brakes , " Bockscar " made a swerving 90 - degree turn at the end of the runway to avoid running off the runway . A second engine died from fuel exhaustion by the time the plane came to a stop . The flight engineer later measured fuel in the tanks and concluded that less than five minutes total remained . Following the mission , there was confusion over the identification of the plane . The first eyewitness account by war correspondent William L . Laurence of the " New York Times " , who accompanied the mission aboard the aircraft piloted by Bock , reported that Sweeney was leading the mission in " The Great Artiste " . However , he also noted its " Victor " number as 77 , which was that of " Bockscar " , writing that several personnel commented that 77 was also the jersey number of the football player Red Grange . Laurence had interviewed Sweeney and his crew in depth and was aware that they referred to their airplane as " The Great Artiste " . Except for " Enola Gay " , none of the 393d ' s B - 29s had yet had names painted on the noses , a fact which Laurence himself noted in his account , and unaware of the switch in aircraft , Laurence assumed Victor 77 was " The Great Artiste " . In fact , Victor 89 was " The Great Artiste " . Current status . After the war , " Bockscar " returned to the United States in November 1945 and served with the 509th at Roswell Army Air Field , New Mexico . It was nominally assigned to the Operation Crossroads task force , but there are no records indicating that it deployed for the tests . In August 1946 it was assigned to the 4105th Army Air Force Unit at Davis - Monthan Army Air Field , Arizona , for storage . At Davis - Monthan it was placed on display as the aircraft that bombed Nagasaki , but in the markings of " The Great Artiste " . In September 1946 title was passed to the Air Force Museum ( now the National Museum of the United States Air Force ) at Wright - Patterson Air Force Base , Ohio . The aircraft was flown to the Museum on 26 September 1961 , and its original markings were restored . " Bockscar " is now on permanent display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force , Dayton , Ohio . This display , a primary exhibit in the Museum ' s Air Power gallery , includes a replica of the " Fat Man " bomb and signage that states that it was " The aircraft that ended WWII " . In 2005 , a short documentary was made about Charles Sweeney ' s recollections of the Nagasaki mission aboard " Bockscar " , including details of the mission preparation , titled " Nagasaki : The Commander ' s Voice . " Crew members . Regularly assigned crew . Crew C - 13 ( manned " The Great Artiste " on the Nagasaki mission ) : Nagasaki mission crew . Crew C - 15 ( normally assigned to " The Great Artiste " ) : Also on board were the following additional mission personnel :