Enola Gay Archive

The Enola Gay and the Smithsonian

After "The Last Act" With Martin Harwit gone, the museum displayed the Enola Gay's forward fuselage, a propeller, and other components in a depoliticized exhibit. It drew four million visitors, the most ever for a special exhibit. (NASM photo by Carolyn Russo)

In 1994, the National Air and Space Museum and its parent organization, the Smithsonian Institution, planned to exhibit the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, as a prop in a political horror show. It would have depicted Japan more as the victim instead of the aggressor in World War II.

However, the museum's plans were revealed by Air Force Magazine, the journal of the Air Force Association. A raging controversy ensued, and in response to public and Congressional outrage, the political exhibition was canceled in 1995 and the museum director was fired.

The Smithsonian Institution replaced the original exhibition with a straightforward program that eventually became the most popular exhibition in the museum's history.

The controversy never died. Books and articles continue to appear, many of them written by people who have not bothered to check the facts.

Here are the contemporary articles, reports, and documents - drawn upon by all parties to the controversy - that were the raw materials for the argument in 1994 and 1995.

Here also is the complete report, "The Smithsonian and the Enola Gay," published by the Air Force Association in April 2004.

Chronology of the Controversy

Revisionism Gone Wrong

A collection of Air Force Association reports, analyses and articles, ranging from March 1994 to December 1996 --

Part 1 Special reports and analyses

Part 2 Articles and editorials

The Airplane

The Crew

The Atom Bomb

The Mission

Recommended Reading and Web Site Links

Frequently Asked Questions

On the Record

Climate Change
"The environment inside our Air Force is changing. It's been changing for the last 25 to 30 years, but it hasn't changed enough and it hasn't changed in all the right ways to ensure integration of all airmen. And so you and I are going to change it—immediately and definitively. We must ensure that every member of our Air Force is treated with respect and feels like a critically important part of the team."
—Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh addressing more than 140 wing commanders from across the service at JB Andrews, Md., Nov. 28, 2012.

On the Record

Wisdom and Technology
"No one has done more than the two visionaries on this stage. Now, you have to think about what real visionaries do. They look at the world and they see what's missing. So they set out to fill the gap, to build something new. And that's what Sam Nunn and Dick Lugar did many years ago. They challenged us to think anew; to imagine, after decades of confrontation, how our nations might engage in cooperation. Early in the Cold War, Einstein warned of the danger of our wisdom not keeping pace with our technology. And with Nunn-Lugar, our wisdom began to catch up."
—President Obama honoring Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) and former Sen. Sam Nunn in remarks at the 20th Anniversary Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Symposium in Washington, D.C., Dec. 3, 2012.