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Enola Gay

Main article: Enola Gay

Enola Gay in the Smithsonian storage facility at Suitland, Maryland in 1987

The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named for the mother of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group, who selected the aircraft while it was still on the assembly line in Bellevue, Nebraska, at what is now Offutt Air Force Base. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in the bombing of Hiroshima.

After the war ended in August 1945, the Chief of United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), General of the Army Henry H. Arnold, took steps to preserve the history of the Army Air Forces. He was instrumental in the creation, on 4 February 1946, of the Air Force Association (AFA), an advocacy group for Air Force people and airpower. Starting in July 1946, its activities included the publication of Air Force Magazine, which had been the official service journal of the Army Air Forces since December 1942.

The AFA lobbied Congress to create a National Air Museum, to be administered by the Smithsonian Institution, and located on the National Mall in Washington, DC, where it would stand as a reminder of the importance of airpower. Congress passed an authorization bill on 12 August 1946, which described the functions of the museum:

Said national air museum shall memorialize the national development of aviation; collect, preserve, and display aeronautical equipment of historical interest and significance; serve as a repository for scientific equipment and data pertaining to the development of aviation; and provide educational material for the historical study of aviation.

To ensure that the air museum would have aircraft to display, Arnold teamed up with Paul E. Garber to identify significant aircraft held by the USAAF and donate them to the museum. One of these was Enola Gay. On 24 July 1946, it was flown to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Arizona, in preparation for storage. On 30 August 1946, the title to the aircraft was transferred to the Smithsonian. It remained at Davis-Monthan until 3 July 1949, when Tibbets flew it to Orchard Place Air Field, Park Ridge, Illinois, by for acceptance by the Smithsonian, as part of an air show co-sponsored by the Smithsonian and the AFA. Under the US legislative system, authorization is insufficient; Congress also has to pass an appropriation bill allocating funding. Since this was not done, there was no money for the museum building. After the Korean War broke out, the United States Air Force (USAF) needed Park Ridge back, so Enola Gay was flown to Pyote Air Force Base, Texas, on 12 January 1952, and then to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on 2 December 1953.

It was hoped that the USAF would guard the plane but, lacking hangar space, it was left outdoors on a remote part of the base, exposed to the elements. Souvenir hunters broke in and removed parts, and insects and birds gained access to the aircraft. Garber became concerned about the its deteriorating condition, and feared that it would suffer irreparable damage. And so, on 10 August 1960, Smithsonian staff began dismantling the aircraft, a process that took nearly a year to complete. The components were transported to the Smithsonian's preservation, restoration, and storage facility in Suitland-Silver Hill, Maryland on 21 July 1961.

National Air and Space Museum

Main article: National Air and Space Museum

Following an abortive attempt to reserve a site on the National Mall near the Smithsonian Institution Building in 1956, Senator Clinton P. Anderson introduced a bill on 2 May 1957 to reserve one on which the museum now stands. The 1957 Sputnik crisis and the resulting Space Race led to a surge of public interest in space exploration. The Freedom 7 and Friendship 7 Project Mercury spacecraft were donated to the Smithsonian, and 2,670,000 visitors descended on the Arts and Industries Building when they were put on display in 1963. Anderson and Representative Clarence Cannon, both members of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian, introduced legislation in February and March 1964 to rename the museum the National Air and Space Museum, expanding its scope to include space. Their bill failed to reach a vote in 1964, and died in committee when introduced in 1965, but was passed in 1966, albeit with a caveat that "appropriations should not be requested unless and until there is a substantial reduction in our expenses in Vietnam". Requests in the budgets for 1968, 1969 and 1970 were denied.

Apollo Lunar Module and Bell X-1 at the National Air and Space Museum

The Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969 created another surge of interest in space. An exhibition of a moon rock attracted 200,000 visitors in one month. On 19 May 1970, Senator Barry Goldwater gave an impassioned speech in the Senate calling for funding for a museum building. Congress relented, and on 10 August 1972, approved $13 million and contract authority of $27 million for its construction. This was insufficient to build a museum large enough for Enola Gay. Goldwater's vision did not include it. "What we are interested in here", he told a Senate committee, "is truly historic aircraft. I wouldn't consider the one that dropped the bomb on Japan as belonging to that category."

Ground was broken on the new museum on 20 November 1972, and it opened on 1 July 1972 as part of celebrations of the United States Bicentennial. Over one million visitors passed through its doors in the first month, and it quickly established itself as one of the world's most popular museums, averaging between eight and nine million visitors per annum over the next two decades. Still, many artefacts, especially large ones like Enola Gay, remained in storage. In 1977, Don Lopez, the head of the Smithsonian's Aeronautics Division, recommended to Collins that an extension of the museum be established at a regional airport within two hours drive of Washington, DC. The Federal Aviation Authority set aside 100 acres (40 ha) near Washington Dulles International Airport in 1980, and Congress authorized construction in 1993, but once again did not allocate funding.

Restoration

Under the cockpit window of the Enola Gay, while in storage 1987.

Enola Gay remained at Silver Hill. In the early 1980s, veterans of the 509th Composite Group viewed the aircraft, and were disturbed, dismayed and depressed at its condition. Donald C. Rehl, who had served as a pilot with the 509th Composite Group, and his former navigator, Frank B. Stewart, began lobbying for the aircraft to either be restored and put on display, or transferred to another museum, possibly the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. They enlisted Tibbets in their campaign. William A. Rooney, a veteran of 40th Bombardment Group , who had flown the B-29 in China and India during the war, sent a letter to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Robert McCormick Adams Jr., though Goldwater, asking for the Enola Gay to be put on display.

Restoration of the bomber at the Paul E. Garber Facility, as Silver Hill had been renamed on 2 June 1980, began on 5 December 1984. The propellers that were used on the bombing mission were shipped to Texas A&M University. One of these propellers was trimmed to 12.5 feet (3.8 m) for use in the university's Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel. The lightweight aluminium variable-pitch propeller is powered by a 1,250 kW electric motor providing a wind speed up to 200 miles per hour (320 km/h). Two engines were rebuilt at Garber and two at San Diego Air and Space Museum. Each engine required between 1,500 and 3,000 man-hours of work. The wooden flooring was removed, restored, and reinstalled, as was the tail gun turret system, the ground power unit and the radar.

The work was slow and meticulous. Every component was carefully cleaned. Some parts and instruments had been removed and could not be located. Replacements were found or fabricated, and marked so that future curators could distinguish them from the original components. Restoration of forward fuselage required almost 8,000 man-hours; the rear fuselage took 7,000 man-hours: the tail surfaces, 2,000; the inboard wings, 2,500; and other parts around 4,000. Some 32,000 man-hours of work had been carried out by the end of 1991. By September 1993, restoration work had commenced on the control surfaces, the rudder, elevators and ailerons. These were covered in fabric, which was then painted to match the silver metal. The fabric had to be replaced. All told the restoration effort took nearly ten years, consumed 25 man-years and cost about a million dollars.

Exhibition

Enola Gay became the center of a controversy at the Smithsonian Institution when the museum planned to put its fuselage on public display in 1995 as part of an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The exhibit, The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, was drafted by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum staff, and arranged around the restored Enola Gay.

Critics of the planned exhibit, especially those of the American Legion and the Air Force Association, charged that the exhibit focused too much attention on the Japanese casualties inflicted by the nuclear bomb, rather than on the motivations for the bombing or the discussion of the bomb's role in ending the conflict with Japan. The exhibit brought to national attention many long-standing academic and political issues related to retrospective views of the bombings. As a result, after various failed attempts to revise the exhibit in order to meet the satisfaction of competing interest groups, the exhibit was canceled on 30 January 1995. Martin O. Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, was compelled to resign over the controversy.

Outcome

The forward fuselage did go on display on 28 June 1995. On 2 July 1995, three people were arrested for throwing ash and human blood on the aircraft's fuselage, following an earlier incident in which a protester had thrown red paint over the gallery's carpeting. The exhibition closed on 18 May 1998, and the fuselage was returned to the Garber Facility for final restoration.

While the fuselage was on display, from 1995 to 1998, work continued on the remaining unrestored components. The aircraft was shipped in pieces to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia between March and June 2003, with the fuselage and wings reunited for the first time since 1960 on 10 April 2003, and assembly completed on 8 August 2003. The aircraft is currently at Washington Dulles International Airport in the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, since the museum annex opened on 15 December 2003.

“ Undoubtedly Heyman, as a shrewd bureaucrat, understood that the dispute was not simply about the atomic bomb. Rather, the dispute was sometimes a symbolic issue in a "culture war" in which many Americans lumped together the seeming decline of American power, the difficulties of the domestic economy, the threats in world trade and especially Japan's successes, the loss of domestic jobs, and even changes in American gender roles and shifts in the American family. To a number of Americans, the very people responsible for the script were the people who were changing America. The bomb, representing the end of World War II and suggesting the height of American power was to be celebrated. It was, in this judgment, a crucial symbol of America's "good war", one fought justly for noble purposes at a time when America was united. Those who in any was questioned the bomb's use were, in this emotional framework, the enemies of America. ”

References

• Bernstein, Barton (1995). "The Struggle Over History: Defining the Hiroshima Narrative". In Nobile, Philip (ed.). Judgment at the Smithsonian. New York: Marlowe & Co. pp. 127–256. ISBN 978-1-56924-841-6. OCLC 32856425.
• Campbell, Richard H. (2005). The Silverplate Bombers: A History and Registry of the Enola Gay and Other B-29's Configured to Carry Atomic Bombs. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-7864-2139-8.
• Correll, John T. (April 2004). The Smithsonian and the Enola Gay: An Air Force Association Special Report (PDF). Arlington, Virginia: Aerospace Education Foundation. OCLC 56795888. Retrieved 8 March 2017.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Goldberg, Stanley (1999). "The Enola Gay Affair: What Evidence Counts When We Commemorate Historical Events?". Osiris. 14, Commemorative Practices in Science: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Collective Memory: 176–186. doi:10.1086/649306. JSTOR 301967.
• Harwit, Martin (1996). An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 978-0-387-94797-6.
• Kohn, Richard H. (December 1995). "History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution's Enola Gay Exhibition". The Journal of American History. 82 (3): 1036–1063. doi:10.2307/2945111. JSTOR 2945111.
• Maddox, Robert James, ed. (2007). Hiroshima in History: the Myths of Revisionism. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-1962-6. OCLC 720831424.
• Mayr, Otto (July 1998). "The "Enola Gay" Fiasco: History, Politics, and the Museum". Technology and Culture. 39 (3): 462–473. JSTOR 1215894.
• Polmar, Norman (2004). The Enola Gay: The B-29 that Dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima. Dulles, Virginia: Brassey's. ISBN 1-57488-859-5.
• Post, Robert C. (April 2004). "A Narrative for Our Time: The Enola Gay "And after That, Period"". Technology and Culture. 45 (2): 373–395. doi:10.1353/tech.2004.0087. JSTOR 40060749.
• Pretzer, William S. (July 1998). "Reviewing Public History in Light of the "Enola Gay"". Technology and Culture. 39 (3): 457–461. JSTOR 1215893.
• Roland, Alex (1993). "Celebration or Education? The Goals of the U.S. National Air and Space Museum". History and Technology. 10 (1): 77–89. doi:10.1080/07341519308581837.
• Tibbets, Paul W. (1998). Return of the Enola Gay. New Hope, Pennsylvania: Enola Gay Remembered Inc. ISBN 0970366604.
• Yakel, Elizabeth (Spring 2000). "Museums, Management, Media, and Memory: Lessons from the Enola Gay Exhibition". Libraries & Culture. 35 (2): 278–310. JSTOR 25548815.