What museum is the enola gay in

The plane was restored to be part of a full exhibit, presented alongside context about the atomic bombing's mass civilian casualties. Gregg Herken: Hello. The exhibit was primarily dedicated to the technical process of restoring the aircraft; as one visitor noted, "I learned a lot about how to polish aluminum, but I did not learn very much about the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

Welcome to Museum Archipelago. Enola Gay flew as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft that day. I did not want to touch it. So let's get started. Gregg Herken: I've written about and taught the subject of nuclear history, and that's why I think Martin chose me to begin at last the effort to get the Enola Gay on exhibit.

And they wanted to show me around. Gregg Herken: It was shortly after I joined the museum and I went out to the restoration facility that the Smithsonian operates in Garber in Maryland. Today, as a new presidential executive order dictates how the Smithsonian interprets American history, we realize the " Enola Gay Fiasco" isn't just a cautionary tale—it's the blueprint for a more aggressive campaign to justify anything.

Following the controversy, museums and curators became increasingly cautious of any topic that could be seen as controversial and other issues of the culture wars became highly emotional affairs and treated with the same disdain for facts and discussion that the Enola Gay exhibit was.

Director Martin Harwit, who was hired in , was a bit of a departure from previous National Air and Space Museum directors who tended to be pilots or astronauts. Museum Archipelago guides you through the rocky landscape of museums. What was once a beautiful shiny machine with four powerful engines, just powerful enough with the right banking maneuver to escape the hell it unleashed, was scattered and severed, with disheveled tubes where the wings used to be and the remains of birds nests in the turrets.

In this episode, historian Gregg Herken, who served as Chairman of the museum's Space History Division during the controversy, recounts how the exhibit went from reckoning with the bomb's full impact to re-enforcing a patriotic narrative. Three days later, Bockscar (on display at the U.S.

Air Force Museum near Dayton, Ohio) dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. On 6 August , during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. My name is Gregg Herken. He recalls the specific moments that led up to one of the museum industry's cautionary tales, like when the director agreed to remove evocative artifacts like a schoolgirl's carbonized lunchbox from Hiroshima from the exhibition plans, and how the Air Force Association demanded the exhibit say the bombing saved 1 million American lives and other assertions that have been challenged by generations of historians.

And one of them had the label "bombs. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and destroyed about three-quarters of the. The Enola Gay exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum features the B bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II.

The Enola Gay (/ əˈnoʊlə /) is a Boeing B Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. And off to the left was a panel that had, I think it was five toggle switches. On August 6, , this Martin-built BMO dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat on Hiroshima, Japan.

And that was the switch that released the Little Boy bomb on Hiroshima. Cancel anytime. I'm Ian Elsner. Each episode is rarely longer than 15 minutes. A third B, The Great Artiste, flew as an observation aircraft on both. But that exhibit never opened. Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.

Harwit was an astrophysicist. Herken was part of the team planning the exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum that would feature the restored Enola Gay and of course he accepted the invitation and climbed up into the fuselage. Gregg Herken: But I remember just thinking that I could sit in, I'm sitting in that seat, I could just reach over and flip that switch.

And I thought there is bad juju with that. Instead, after years of script revisions and intense pressure from veterans' groups and Congress, the museum displayed the restored bomber's fuselage with minimal interpretation. Gregg Herken thought that it was a signal that the Smithsonian was interested in not just displaying but also interpreting the artifacts that represent the nation's past.

Join Club Archipelago Start with a 7-day free trial. Gregg Herken: So I sat in Tibbets' seat, in the pilot seat for a second, and then I sat in the bombardier seat.