This would have required much less modification, but Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr., the director of the Manhattan Project, and General Henry H. Arnold, the Chief of United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), wished to use an American plane, if this was at all possible.
Its 27 operational Silverplate B-29s (the 309th had ultimately received 53 of the 65 produced) were transferred in 1949 to the 97th Bomb Wing at Biggs Air Force Base, El Paso, Texas, when the group converted to B-50D Superfortresses.
Tibbets chose the remote Wendover Army Air Field over Great Bend, Kansas, and Mountain Home, Idaho, as the location for the Silverplate training program.