Tuesday, August 19, 2003
The Enola Gay is on display after undergoing a massive restoration. It now sits, supposedly in the condition it would have been during its flying day. Apparently this time the Smithsonian's exhibit won't be plagued by the political overtones that it had to weather the last time it did an Enola Gay exhibit a few years ago. 
I'd love to see it.
Enola Gay, Waiting In the Wings No More (washingtonpost.com)
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress helped end the war when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, killing an estimated 140,000 Japanese. It will be one of the main attractions of a massive aircraft display at the National Air and Space Museum's new facility in Northern Virginia. The plane has been meticulously restored, its enormous wings polished to a blinding silver and its cockpit, bomb bay and propellers gleaming, thanks to 300,000 hours of work.
It is one of 80 historic aircraft that will be on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center when the museum opens in December at Dulles International Airport...
Update: Predictably, some Japanese anti-nuke groups aren't too happy. Well that's too bad. War is hell, and all-out war to the death, civilization to civilization, is double hell. This is one of the planes that ended the war - a just war, albeit ugly as all wars are.
