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Aviation History And Aircraft Photography
B-29 Superfortress
National Air And Space Museum
Washington, DC


B-29

Enola Gay, on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum's Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, is one of the two atomic bombers, both of which still survive in museums. After her military career, she sat outside at Andrews AFB in suburban Washington DC for many years. Weather and vandals took a toll on the aircraft. The NASM took control of the Enola Gay and moved her to Silver Hills, where she sat out of the public eye for years. She was then restored in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In the mid-1990s, a wave of revisionist thinking took over the NASM, and plans were made to put the nose section of the Enola Gay on display as a centerpiece of an exhibit that painted the US as the aggressors in WWII, and the atomic bombing as a war crime. Public outrage squashed this plan and lead to the resignations of many NASM leaders. A new exhibit was put on, with just the nose of the B-29 and simple statement of the facts.

The Enola Gay was moved into the new Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the new NASM facility at Dullas Airport. She has been reassembled, and is now one of the centerpiece attractions at the Udvar-Hazy Center.

The photo below is the forward fuselage of the Enola Gay at the National Air & Space Museum restoration facility in Silver Hills, Maryland, in the early 1990s. The primary restoration work had been completed at the time of this photo, and mostly exterior work and assembly work remained to be completed.

B-29

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