Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Emperor Palpatine
The Enola Gay is on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space extension at Dulles Airport. They did such a good restoration job she looks like you only need the ignition key to start her up.

Still looks like a debutante going to the ball.

19 posted on 09/02/2008 3:00:43 PM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]


To: Jimmy Valentine
The Enola Gay is on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space extension at Dulles Airport. They did such a good restoration job she looks like you only need the ignition key to start her up.

Having seen her there multiple times since she went on display (and before that back in the 1990s both at the redesigned NASM Mall exhibit and at Garber), I think they did a little too good of a job. I don't think she looked that bright and polished when she rolled out of the factory. And NASM managed to screw up the restoration of her nose gear (when she dropped the bomb it was painted zinc chromate as an anti-corrosion measure ... they went and painted it silver).

Interesting story about the Enola Gay and the bomb, which bears telling here. It was told to me by one of the senior docents at the museum. Sitting underneath the Enola Gay is the last remaining Aichi M6A Seiran ... which was a Japanese floatplane bomber designed to be broken and folded down and stuffed into a chamber on the I-400 Class "submarine aircraft carriers" that Japan built near the end of the war.

When NASM Dulles opened, the former CO of the Seiran squadron visited to see the last of his old planes on display (NASM had established a relationship with him when he showed up at one of Garber's weekend tours when the Seiran was under restoration). This was a guy who, in early/mid-August 1945, was with his squadron aboard those submarines steaming to launch a suicide attack on the US carrier fleet at Ulithi. Someone at NASM asked him what he thought of the Seiran being displayed underneath the Enola Gay. He looked up at the Superfort and said "That plane not only saved my life ... it saved my country".
26 posted on 09/02/2008 6:45:56 PM PDT by tanknetter
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson