Enola gay pilot controversy
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In that year curators at the Air and Space Museum planned to exhibit the aircraft, situating it in the context of the use of strategic bombing, the end of World War II, and the beginning of the cold war. The current controversy continues the acrimonious debate about exhibiting the Enola Gay that began in 1994. The petition says that should the museum fail to respond, "we will join with others in this country and around the world to protest the exhibit in its present form and to catalyze a national discussion of critical nuclear issues."Ī statement issued by the National Air and Space Museum in response to the petition, (see ) notes that "this type of label is precisely the same kind used for other airplanes and spacecraft in the museum." Museum officials believe that the text "does not glorify or vilify the role this aircraft played in history" but rather conforms to the museum's congressionally mandated mission to "memorialize the national development of aviation and space flight." It also asks the museum to cosponsor a conference on the history of nuclear weapons.
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Dailey, USMC (Ret.), to meet with scholars to plan an exhibit that places the aircraft in historical context. The petition asks Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence Small and NASM's director, General John R. Doctorow, Daniel Ellsberg, Jonathan Schell, and Kurt Vonnegut writer-producer Norman Lear actor, director, and activist Martin Sheen and filmmaker Oliver Stone. Among the many other signatories are several prominent activists, authors, and other public figures including Noam Chomsky and Robert Jay Lifton authors E.L. ) The committee's Statement of Principles (also available on the web site) declares that displaying the Enola Gay as a technological achievement reflects "extraordinary callousness toward the victims, indifference to the deep divisions among American citizens about the propriety of these actions, and disregard for the feelings of most of the world's peoples." A number of historians signed the statement, which was delivered to Smithsonian officials on November 5. The Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy charges that the proposed exhibit will be "devoid not only of historical context and discussion of the ongoing controversy surrounding the bombings, but even of basic information regarding the number of casualties." (See the "introductory letter" on the committee's web site at. The new exhibit, scheduled to open in December 2003, will, as a NASM press release (available at ) notes, identify the Enola Gay as the aircraft that "dropped the first atomic weapon used in combat" and describe the B-29 as "the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II," but will not otherwise explore the historical context of Hiroshima or nuclear weapons. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport, which will also feature other aviation artifacts too large for the main facility on the National Mall-such as the Space Shuttle Enterprise, an SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft, and the Dash 80 prototype of the Boeing 707. The museum had earlier announced plans to display the restored and fully assembled aircraft at its new Steven F. A group of historians and activists has delivered a petition challenging the National Air and Space Museum's proposed exhibit of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress used in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.