6, 1945.Ĭall it a victory for American heritage over the forces of political correctness and revisionism. Under unprecedented public pressure, the museum has drastically altered its original plans for its exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the Enola Gay’s only mission: the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. That’s a nice bit of symbolism for the implosion that’s hit the Enola Gay’s exhibit as well.įive months before the scheduled May, 1995, opening of the most controversial exhibit ever staged at America’s most popular museum, the emotion-soaked debate over the plane and its display has already become so politically charged and so weighted down by personal recriminations that the Smithsonian has been forced into retreat. “We could have cleared an entire area of the main hall and just had room enough to display the Enola Gay with its wings on, but it’s so heavy it still would have gone right through the floor into the parking garage below,” says museum spokesman Mike Fetters. So only the front fuselage of the Enola Gay sits behind locked and guarded doors in a closed-off museum gallery, while curators slowly-and now cautiously-build an exhibit around the B-29 to tell its story.
Even one as cavernous as the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum on the Mall here. It is simply too big and too heavy to be displayed in one piece in a museum. When fully assembled, the most famous bomber aircraft of World War II is 99 feet long and has a 144-foot wingspan. The last B-29 in squadron use retired from service in September 1960.Shrink-wrapped, wingless and with its tail section missing, the Enola Gay lies silently amid the debris of museum construction, like a beached whale awaiting its fate. The B-29 saw military service again in Korea between 19, battling new adversaries: jet fighters and electronic weapons. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered.Īfter the war, B-29s were adapted for several functions, including in-flight refueling, antisubmarine patrol, weather reconnaissance and rescue duty. Three days later a second B-29, Bockscar, dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. As many as 1,000 Superfortresses at a time bombed Tokyo, destroying large parts of the city. Production ended in 1946.ī-29s were primarily used in the Pacific theater during World War II. built 668 of the giant bombers in Georgia, and the Glenn L. The earliest B-29s were built before testing was finished, so the Army established modification centers where last-minute changes could be made without slowing expanding assembly lines.īoeing built a total of 2,766 B-29s at plants in Wichita, Kan., (previously the Stearman Aircraft Co., merged with Boeing in 1934) and in Renton, Wash. The Soviet-built copy of the B-29 was called the Tupolev Tu-4. Modifications led to the B-29D, upgraded to the B-50, and the RB-29 photoreconnaissance aircraft. The B-29 used the high-speed Boeing 117 airfoil, and its larger Fowler flaps added to the wing area as they increased lift. The B-29 was also the world’s heaviest production plane because of increases in range, bomb load and defensive requirements. The tail gunner had a separate pressurized area that could only be entered or left at altitudes that did not require pressurization. Two crew areas, fore and aft, were pressurized and connected by a long tube over the bomb bays, allowing crew members to crawl between them. One of the most technologically advanced airplanes of World War II, the B-29 had many new features, including guns that could be fired by remote control. Boeing submitted the proposal for the B-29 long-range heavy bomber to the Army in 1940, before the United States entered World War II.