While this exhibit is now closed, Museum specialists continued to restore the remaining components of the airplane, and after an additional nine years the fully assembled Enola Gay went on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. The Enola Gay was used to carry out the first atomic bomb mission and is perhaps the best-known aircraft from World War II. The exhibition text summarized the history and development of the Boeing B-29 fleet used in bombing raids against Japan.Īnother portion of the exhibit detailed the painstaking efforts of Smithsonian aircraft restoration specialists who had spent more than a decade restoring parts of the Enola Gay for this exhibition.
The components on display included two engines, the vertical stabilizer, an aileron, propellers, and the forward fuselage that contains the bomb bay.Ī video presentation about the Enola Gay's mission included interviews with the crew before and after the mission including mission pilot Col. Originally Answered: Were the crew of the Enola Gay remorsefull upon seeing the bomb exposion and the after effects Not really, they were considered national hero’s afterwards, and they understood that dropping the bombs would bring the war to an end with the least amount of casualties possible. The release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy containing about 64 kg (141 lb) of uranium-235 took 44.4 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at about 31,000 feet (9,400 m) to a detonation height of about 1,900 feet (580 m) above the city.129130131 Enola Gay traveled 11.5 mi (18.5 km) before it felt. This remote desert landscape was a specialized training base for B-17 and B-24 bomber crews, including the 509th Composite Group and B-29 Enola Gay unit who carried the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It contained several major components of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber used in the atomic mission that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb fell quite far, which takes a rather long time. This past exhibition, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, told the story of the role of the Enola Gay in securing Japanese surrender.