Big Stink (aircraft)

Big Stink – later renamed Dave's Dream – was a United States Army Air Forces Boeing B-29-40-MO Superfortress bomber (Victor number 90) that participated in the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.

Victor 90 left without one of the support members when Major Hopkins ordered Robert Serber of Project Alberta to leave the plane – reportedly after the B-29 had already taxied onto the runway – because the scientist had forgotten his parachute.

B-29-40-MO 44-27354 was built at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Plant at Omaha, Nebraska, accepted by the U.S. Army Air Forces on 20 April 1945, and flown to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, by its assigned crew A-5 (under Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Classen, aircraft commander and group deputy commander) in May 1945.

On 23 July 1945, with Colonel Paul Tibbets at the controls, it dropped a dummy "Little Boy" atomic bomb assembly off Tinian to test its radar altimeter detonators.

In April 1946 it was assigned to Operation Crossroads, and renamed Dave's Dream by its crew in honor of Captain David Semple, a bombardier who had been killed in the crash of another B-29 on 7 March 1946, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The crew of "Dave's Dream" pose in front of their ship, c. 1946.
509th Composite Group aircraft immediately before their bombing mission of Hiroshima. Left to right: Big Stink, The Great Artiste , and Enola Gay . Photo by Harold Agnew 1945