The track was released on 26 September 1980. It was written by Andy McCluskey, who co-founded Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark with Paul Humphreys, and became the only single taken from their second album, *Organisation*. It reached number 8 in the UK and enjoyed immense success across Europe in particular.
Enola Gay is not the name of a fictional heroine created for the purposes of a song. It is the name of the American Boeing B-29 which, on 6 August 1945, dropped the ‘Little Boy’ atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, had named his aircraft after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.
And this is where OMD’s lyrics take on a whole new dimension. McCluskey does not describe the explosion directly. He almost speaks to the aeroplane as if it were a character. The ‘mother’ referred to in the song is a reference to Paul Tibbets’s mother, whilst ‘Little Boy’ is, of course, the name of the bomb carried in the hold.
The song’s origins also stem from a long-standing fascination of McCluskey’s. As a child, he used to build Airfix model kits and was fascinated by Second World War aircraft. Later, he became interested in the Enola Gay, collected documents and information on Hiroshima, and eventually transformed this historical material into a pop song.
The song was written as early as 1979, in the back room of Paul Humphreys’s mother’s house. OMD were still a young band making electronic music with relatively limited resources. A rhythmic pattern, a few synthesisers and, above all, that incredibly simple melody were all that was needed.
That is the whole paradox of ‘Enola Gay’. The subject matter is horrific, the music almost euphoric. There’s nothing heavy or sombre about it. You can dance to it without understanding a single word of the lyrics. In fact, the real chorus is almost more instrumental than vocal: a few synth notes that immediately stick in your memory.
Yet the hit we know today almost turned out differently. An initial version was recorded with producer Mike Howlett, and the record even began to be pressed. But McCluskey wasn’t satisfied. The pressing was halted, new vocals were recorded, and the final version was pieced together from several takes.
Then ‘Enola Gay’ became a massive hit.
And that’s when the story takes on an almost absurd dimension: a song dedicated to the first atomic bomb used against a population becomes a party anthem. It plays in nightclubs, on the radio, at parties, and has endured through the decades. Even today, as soon as the opening bars begin, people start dancing.
McCluskey himself has often highlighted the strangeness of the situation: seeing a crowd cheering to a song about Hiroshima is inevitably somewhat unsettling.
There was even a rather amusing incident. The song was reportedly dropped from a BBC children’s programme, not because it mentioned an atomic bomb, but because someone had interpreted the word ‘Gay’ in the title as a reference to homosexuality. A curious hierarchy of concerns back in 1980.
Perhaps that is precisely why ‘Enola Gay’ still works so well. OMD never turned it into a heavy-handed or overtly political song. The band set a bright melody to a horrific subject and let the contrast do the talking.
Behind the synths and that chorus which seems never to age lies a far less light-hearted question: how can such a monstrous act go down in history under the pretence of having helped to end a war?
OMD doesn’t really provide the answer.
They turned it into a hit.
