Wendover Air Field Scholarly Journal

http://places.designobserver.com/feature/the-half-life-of-history-wendover-and-the-enola-gay/29368/

Mark Klett & William Foxx

I really enjoyed this piece these two guys have put together. It focuses on the hangar that my group and I visited ourselves at the Wendover Army Field in Wendover Utah. In some way this is also a source for our group; the vivid detail that the writers go into about the space and leftovers of the Air Force Base are amazing. As if they were describing paintings in exact detail. Hearing their paragraphs of details immediately made me remember my time visiting, and I would compare and contrast throughout the entire read. They put a strong question out there: Why has a place like this been so forgotten about? And as they describe what's left of the place it's clear that it's not much. It's not a large museum at all and it seems like little to no money has gone into preserving it. After all, they suggest, it was a home for the plane that went on to drop the first atomic bomb ever. Controversial or not, it's still talked about and debated about to this day. They suggest that what's left of the Army field should be a much more famous, historical site.

"During our work, we've slowly uncovered not just evidence of Wendover's past, but also our own motivations for conducting this search. "

What's nice is that the authors also offer a lot of history and factual information on what happened at this base. They shared stories of actual crashes and incidents that occurred. Aparently one plane "Cartwheeled" when it's wing hit scraped the ground and landed on train tracks. A train came a long and became derailed because it couldn't stop in time. A lot of beer on that train apparently  it was looted quickly after the collision. He explains that flying into Wendover was quite difficult, especially during cloudy days; pilots had to dip below the clouds to find the town of Wendover. Reflection off the salt flats didn't help either. Pilots would often get confused and think they were flying upside down because what they saw below them was a perfect reflection of the star-filled sky.

They also went into detail about training, something my group is very much focusing on for our film. Plane shooters practiced at the flats, for there were many ranges created in Wendover. In order to practice "skeet shooting," which was simply shooting targets on the move, they would sit on railway flatcars and practice shooting while moving in circles. "The gunners learned relative motion, tracking and shooting objects as they came closer and then moved farther away at up to 40 miles per hour." 

I plan to use this article without a doubt, and share it with my group. The authors and researchers describe in great detail what all four of my group members would most likely say, myself included.