Visitor comments were overwhelmingly favorable. From 1995 to 1998, the museum displayed the forward fuselage of the Enola Gay in a depoliticized exhibit that drew four million visitors, the most in the museum's history for a special exhibition.
Under new management, the Air and Space Museum returned to its mission to collect, preserve, and display historic aircraft and spacecraft. The exhibition was concealed in 1995 in response to public and Congressional outrage, and the museum director was fired.
When the museum's plan were revealed, initially an article in Air Force Magazine in 1994, a raging controversy ensued. It depicted the Japanese more as victims than as aggressors in World War II.
In the 1990s, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum laid plans to use the Enola Gay as a prop in a political horror show. Fifty years after Hiroshima, the airplane flew into controversy of a different sort. The bombing of Hiroshima was a famous event, a defining moment of the 20th century, but the aircraft that flew the mission was largely forgotten and left to deteriorate, until restoration finally began in 1984. By eliminating the need for an invasion of the Japanese home islands, the atomic bombs prevented casualties, both American and Japanese, that would have exceeded the death tolls at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. However, these missions brought an end to a war in which 17 million people had died at the hands of the Japanese empire between 19.2 Until the atomic bombs fell, Japan had not been ready to end the war. At Hiroshima, more than half the city was destroyed in a flash, and 80,000 were killed instantly. 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Close Usage Conditions Apply The Smithsonian Institution Archives welcomes personal and educational use of its collections unless otherwise noted. Restoration work, done almost entirely by volunteers, began in 1984.On Aug. It was disassembled in 1960 and put in storage with the Smithsonian. It was sent to Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland in 1953 and placed in storage. The Enola Gay was flown back to the United States in November 1945 and placed in storage at the Davis-Monthan Army Air Field in Arizona. Many who survived the initial attack succumbed later to after effects, notably from radiation.īockscar is on display at the U.S. Ninety-five percent of those killed at Nagasaki died from burns, but at Hiroshima thousands were killed by falling debris. Three days later, the Enola Gay flew as an advance weather reconnaissance aircraft for a B-29 called Bockscar, which dropped the atom bomb "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, killing 39,000. As Tibbets wrote later, "A terrible, strong and unimaginable explosion occurred near the central section of the city." 13," dropping its single bomb at 8:16 a.m. As ordered by President Harry Truman, it took off Aug. It reached the U.S.-held island of Tinian that July, and was used for training and bombing practice with non-nuclear munitions. of Omaha, the Enola Gay was personally selected at the plant for the historic bombing by mission commander Col. It was the first bomber with a fully pressurized cabin for the crew, making high-altitude missions practical. Originally intended for action against Nazi Germany, the Superfortress instead entered service in the spring of 1944 as a long-range bomber given the mission of dropping heavy payloads on the Japanese home islands. They represent the thousands of other B-29s that flew and hundreds of thousands of airmen who participated in that conflict." The events that this airplane participated in 1945 represent many things. "The Enola Gay is much more than an artifact," Daso said. The proposed exhibition was scrapped in favor of a smaller, straightforward one that featured the front portion of the Enola Gay's fuselage and confined itself to the details of the mission.Īccording to Dik Daso, curator of modern military aircraft at the museum, B-29s dropping incendiary bombs killed far more Japanese in Tokyo in one night than died at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the second and last target struck with an American nuclear weapon. The museum's director at the time, Martin Harwit, resigned to avoid demotion.