The controversy over how the Enola Gay should represent history gradually becomes history itself. Retrospects and reflections on the controversy following the opening of the new exhibit. In the period before the new exhibit opens, the group of historians calls for national teach-ins in protest, Smithsonian damage control includes a conference on museums in a democratic society at the University of Michigan, and Martin Harwit resigns just before two days of hearings begin in the Senate. Organized opposition, now public - including the American Legion, members of Congress, and World War II veterans of all stripes - to the direction of the Smithsonian exhibit mounts, forcing several more drafts, none of which satisfies the critics.Ī group of historians vigorously defend the museum, but a dispute over the number of lives saved by dropping the bomb dooms negotiations for an exhibit acceptable to the critics, and new Smithsonian Secretary Michael Heyman admits the museum made a mistake, cancels the exhibit, and plans a new, uncontroversial one. The Smithsonian proposal to mark this important anniversary as a "crossroads" - consonant with a new Smithsonian philosophy of museumship by Secretary Robert McCormick Adams and NASM Director Martin Harwit - is unsuccessfully questioned privately by the Air Force Association, led by John T.
Experience the evolution of the Enola Gay controversy by reading through a chronological list of documents divided into five rounds: Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia.The exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II featuring the refurbished B-29 Enola Gay proposed by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum resulted in fierce controversy over how history should represent dropping an atom bomb on Japan. It’s possible, Krauss says, that the Enola Gay might have had a P on its tail when it flew as one of 13 B-29s performing weather and radiological reconnaissance missions in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini atoll in July 1946, “but not during its time on Tinian.” If that’s the case, Harris’ P-tail photo may well be of the bomber on Kwajalein atoll, in the Marshall Islands, the takeoff point for the B-29s that flew in Crossroads.īut if it ever carried a P on its tail, the bomber eventually returned to the circle-R, which is what it sports today on display in the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F.
The Enola Gay and other 509 th bombers also had the last two digits of their serial numbers painted on the nose and on the fuselage near the tail. The National Air and Space Museum has displayed the famous Boeing B-29 Superfortress ever since. They finished assembling the plane on 8 August 2003. Here, workers joined the wings and the fuselage together for the first time since 1960.
“The use of a square-P as a tail marking entailed painting a black square leaving a white P in the center of the square,” he writes. The staff shipped Enola Gay in pieces to the National Air and Space Museum in 2003. Krauss notes that while three B-29s of the 509 th did have a square-P tail mark (which stood for the 39 th Bomb Group, 314 th Wing, North Field, Guam) while on Tinian, the Enola Gay was not among them. The Enola Gay tail marking was changed from the circle-arrow to circle-R, which was the marking for the 6 th Bomb Group, 313 th Wing, North Field, Tinian.” The tail markings of other Marianas-based bomb groups (which used letters) were substituted prior to August 6 to avoid easy recognition of 509 th planes. He writes: “The original tail markings of 509 th B-29s was a forward-pointing arrow in a circle. It was part of a ruse, according to Krauss. Which is correct?”įor the answer, we turned to Robert Krauss, historian for the 509 th Composite Group, the unit that carried out the nuclear bombing missions at the end of WWII. The three are: a black letter P, a circle-R, and a circle-arrow. We have found no way to exhibit the Enola Gay and satisfy everyone. Harris says he has three pictures of the bomber on Tinian island in the Northern Marianas (its takeoff point for the bomb run), and “in each of the pictures, it has a different fin flash on the vertical stabilizer. Martin Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, said at the time.
Stan Harris of Brighton, Colorado, writes with a question about the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Udvar-Hazy Center, but before the museum opened. The Enola Gay in 2003, shortly after moving to the Steven F.