![descriptions in enola gay exhibit descriptions in enola gay exhibit](https://cdn.britannica.com/83/22983-138-ADD07B68/Japan-Hiroshima-B-29-Superfortress-Enola-Gay-dropping-August-6-1945.jpg)
Just like the replays of B of B, Taranto or Pearl that you'll see every year at UK airshows. Good on 'em I say! It was an illustration, not a glorification. They certainly stuck to their guns over having Fifi do the mushroom cloud stunt, rather as you'd expect good old Southern boys to do when a bunch of pinko yankee furriner apologists were trying to tell them otherwise on their own territory. Even so the "heavies" did carry out some military style relief ops on behalf of the government in the (if memory serves) Texan - Mexican floods around 1974. It was once - back in the mid to late '70s I believe, well up in the top 10 world's airforces in terms of sheer numbers - but that was little more than a bit of Texan swank really, and claimed very much tongue in cheek, an aspect of the CAF largely ignored by it's critics. Off topic, the CAF was the Confederate Air Force simply because it was started and almost wholly operated south of the Mason Dixon line, and therefore was fully entitled to it's name. Wonder if he caught this shameful and demeaning disease from our very own PM Crony Blur and his cabal (Oops I mean Government!) of Liars? Sad to think that nowadays Uncle Sam is so cowed by the politically incorrect thought police that he has lost the guts to tell history straight as it happened and feels the need to hide it to suit their particular warped demands. They killed lots and lots of women, children and old folks."īoy: "So those dirty Japanese deserved the same treatment?"įather: "Yes, son, the best way to teach those dirty Japs was to do exactly the same to them."īoy: "Boy oh boy, am I proud of what our country did to those dirty Japs 50 years ago!" They still have a B-29 that makes a flying tour of the country every summer.īored boy: "Dad? What makes the Enola Gay sooooo special?"įather: "Well, it dropped the first atomic bomb to be used by our country as a destructive weapon against an enemy state."įather: "Well, that weapon made a big bang."įather: "Well, big enough to kill 140,000 people."īoy: "Wow! So many enemy soldiers killed in one go! Wow!"įather: "Soldiers? No, son, those were enemy women, enemy children and enemy old folks."įather: "Er, er, look, I know that sounds bad, but it helped to end a very nasty war, son".įather: "Well, those Japanese did something like that at Nanking in China a few years before. (One must remember that at that time the great majority of the members of the CAF were WWII vets.) However the Japanese showed up, the airshow went on and the Japanese left saying that the show was very “nice” and that they had a good time. Needless to say the media had a feeding frenzy. They also said that they where more than happy to have the Japanese attend, however they would not change the airshow for anybody. The good old Texas boys that ran the airshow told the State Department to perform a solo un-natural act and to go away and don’t mess with their airshow.
![descriptions in enola gay exhibit descriptions in enola gay exhibit](https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/EnolaGay/Enola06_1522c20.jpg)
One year there was an official delegation of the Japanese Government scheduled to attend the airshow and the US State Department requested that this part of the show be taken out and to just have the B-29 just make a fly by. The Confederate Air Force has an annual airshow, which included (or at least it did include) a B-29 dropping a bomb with the resulting explosion that simulated the mushroom cloud of the Atomic bomb at the end of the WWII part of the airshow. It'll be interesting to see how they play it when it's displayed in the new facility by IAD, scheduled to open in December (can't wait! ). In the end, the head of the Air and Space Museum lost his job, the Enola Gay exhibit opened with a "straight" retelling of the facts surrounding the events and closed in '98 having been one of the most popular exhibits in Air and Space Museum history. They pressured Congress (which controls the majority of the funding for the Smithsonians) to intervene and the whole thing got ugly and political really quickly. They felt the Japanese were presented as "victims" throughout and not as "aggressors" and that the number of likely American and Japanese lives that were likely spared as a result of not having to invade Japan was woefully underestimated. Members of the American Legion and the Air Force Association got hold of a draft "script" for the exhibit and were appalled at what they considered a completely revisionist look at the event. This was hugely controversial in '94-95 when the Smithsonian planned to include the plane in a "Fifty Year's On" exhibition about dropping the bomb(s).