Air and Space Museum Opens Featuring Enola Gay

[zls44]

About the new annex to the Smithsonian at Dulles International Airport.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/12/13/aerospace.museum/index.html

-snip-

Enola Gay returns

The man who piloted perhaps the most famous plane in the exhibit was on hand to see the aircraft that made him famous. Retired Air Force Gen. Paul Tibbets flew the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima, Japan.

The plane, which had been dismantled in the early 1960s, is fully refurbished and on display at the center.

"When I came in here and saw this thing, the symbols, looking the way it looked," Tibbets said, "I wanted to get right in there and taxi it out."

The exhibit of the Enola Gay stirred some controversy in October when the museum was petitioned to present information with the display on the number of victims associated with the Hiroshima bombing. That request was rejected.

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Part of me says that they had to do it to save thousands of soldiers. But we did also kill thousands of civilians, and that warrents mentioning and reflection, not celebration. It should serve as a reminder of the horrors of war.

Isn't it ironic how unilateral the belief is that the arms race and cold war were terrible things, yet we still celebrate the event that started it all?

[oneighty]

1. Will celebration

of the first Atomic Bomb to destroy fellow humans never end?

Sigh.

180

[slackmaster]

3. Think of it as a celebration of a wonderful airplane

The B-29 rocked! Fantastic piece of engineering.

[slackmaster]

2. Whoopee! Another Atomic Bomb thread!

:eyes:

Isn't it ironic how unilateral the belief is that the arms race and cold war were terrible things, yet we still celebrate the event that started it all?

The end of the Cold War is one of the greatest events of our lifetimes. We celebrate its beginning because without that turn in history, that long-awaited end might never have happened.

:nuke:

[Kolesar]

4. If you want to read propaganda, go read that museum's Vietnam-era exhibit

It is all full of claims of how the communists violated the treaties and agreements and that the US was justified in defending the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodians who were threatened by them. I was last there to read it in the 1980s.

[Say_What]

5. Slaughter of 300,000 civilians in two days is something to be proud of?

Not to mention the suffering that continued for decades as a result of those bombs.

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:
:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Muddleoftheroad]

6. Lots better than continued American death

Or the Japanese deaths that would have resulted from an invasion.

It would have been much simpler if the Japanese had ended the war they began.

[Archae]

7. Because it's history.

The Enola Gay is kept and preserved because it is a part of US history.

Just like in Poland, Auschwitz has been preserved as a part of Poland's history.

Hopefully, people will view this plane, (I saw it when it was still in sections, back in 1996,) and realize the death and destruction that resulted from it's use.

Just remember, how many nukes have been used in war, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

None.