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They decided to exhibit the Enola Gay at the annex, with an accompanying message about the dangers of strategic bombing and escalation. The Enola Gay had recently finished being renovated and the museum had been concerned about transportation and reassemble fees therefore, the proposed annex appeared to be a fitting location. This proposed annex would solve the hassle of disassemble and reassemble larger aircrafts.
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In 1977, NASM had begun discussing the need for bigger buildings to house larger modern aircrafts, and in 1980, the museum had surveyed candidates for the future annex and decided upon the Dulles Airport.
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This vision included his conscious decision to display the Enola Gay.Īt first, the Enola Gay was planned to be displayed at an annex NASM facility near Washington Dulles International Airport. He wanted the museum to be a “public conscience” that would discuss topics “under public debate,” Linenthal described. His vision for the museum diverged from previous directors. In 1987, NASM hired Martin Harwit as their new director. Linenthal, who was on the advisory board of the Enola Gay exhibit. However, the museum felt “ambivalence about the plane’s eventual display,” described historian Edward T. Restoration efforts by the Smithsonian started on December 5, 1984. The veterans formed “the Committee for the Restoration and Proud Display of the Enola Gay” to raise funds. Their motivations, at this time, stemmed primarily from the poor condition of the aircraft. In the 1980s, members of the 509 th Composite Group asked for a proper restoration of the aircraft. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage facility for NASM. In 1961, the Enola Gay was fully disassembled and moved to the Paul E. There its wings began to rust and vandals even damaged the plane. Notably, from 1953 to 1960, its home was Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. A fiery controversy ensued that demonstrated the competing historical narratives regarding the decision to drop the bomb.įollowing World War II, the Enola Gay had been moved around from location to location. Although several attempts were made to rewrite the script of the exhibit, congressional and public pressure eventually led to the cancellation of the exhibit in January 1995 and to the resignation of the Director of the Museum, Martin Harwit, in May.Ĭollected by historian Waldo Heinrichs, the Enola Gay Controversy Collection contains the various versions of the scripts of the planned exhibition and copies of correspondence, memos, publications, and the three volumes of “Revisionism gone wrong: Analysis of the Enola Gay controversy” issued by the Air Force Association.For the 50 th anniversary of the end of World War II, the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) proposed an exhibition that would include displaying the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that was used to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. By mid-summer, the Air Force Association and American Legion led opposition to the exhibit, fearing that it would not present a balanced view of the events and that it would focus exclusively on the “horrors of war” and an alleged “moral equivalence” between Japan and the United States. Early in 1993, curators began to develop plans for an exhibit that would center around the Enola Gay, the B-29 Stratofortress bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, but opposition from veterans’ groups rose almost immediately. On January 30, 1995, the National Air and Space Museum capitulated to popular and political pressure and scuttled an exhibit they had planned to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War.