But the exhibition of the forward fuselage in the Air and Space Museum on the Washington Mall will put the plane on view in the single most-visited museum in the world. The Enola Gay has been accessible to the public for years at a Smithsonian facility outside of Washington, where a 10-year restoration project is nearing completion. Lewis during the final stages of World War II, it became the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. On 6 August 1945, piloted by Tibbets and Robert A. "We're still continuing to talk with veterans groups and other interested parties and there's not any feeling by the museum that we can't still make some changes," he said. The Enola Gay ( / nol /) is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets.
Museum spokesman Mike Fetters said the Smithsonian will consider the complaints. We want to honor the veterans who risked their lives and. The letter notes that the exhibit includes 84 pages of text and 97 photographs on Japanese suffering but less than one page and eight photographs on the suffering inflicted by the Japanese from 1930 to 1945. Although referred to in several places, the Enola Gay exhibit was not among the seven recent Smithsonian exhibits discussed in detail by Smithsonian. These conflicting views pose the dilemma the National Air and Space Museum faces as we prepare an exhibition of the Enola Gay for 1995. They also said the exhibit underplays the importance of the atomic bomb attacks in saving American lives by ending the war before a U.S. The 18 Republicans and six Democrats who signed the letter said they want the exhibit to include more on the suffering inflicted by Japan on the United States and Asian nations during World War II. a planned exhibition of the newly restored Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. "The revised version still does not give a balanced perspective of the events surrounding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." "The planners of this exhibit ignored many of the constructive criticisms," the lawmakers wrote.
In response to complaints from veterans groups and historians, the exhibit has been revised once.