Saturday’s GII Appalachian S. winner Enola Gay and her dam Dakota Queen carry names of WW2 flying machines (with parallel connections to family females). Enola Gay is the world-famous nickname of the B-29 aircraft who dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945 (mother of the pilot, Paul Tibbets, was Enola Gay Tibbets), while Dakota Queen was the Italy-based B-24 bomber valiantly captained by George McGovern in WWII; he made a dangerous emergency landing, saving his crew aboard the badly damaged plane, which was named after his wife Eleanor. Both Tibbets and McGovern were Dakotans. George McGovern was a long-serving senator for South Dakota and unsuccessful presidential candidate against Richard Nixon in 1972. Time is so kind to significant names.
APPALACHIAN S. PRESENTED BY JAPAN RACING ASSOCIATION-GII, $150,000, Keeneland, 7-11, 3yo, f, 1mT, 1:33.97, fm.
1–ENOLA GAY, 118, f, 3, by Uncle Mo
1st Dam: Dakota Queen, by War Front
2nd Dam: Moon Queen (Ire), by Sadler’s Wells
3rd Dam: Infamy (Ire), by Shirley Heights (GB)
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