February 9, 1995

(Footnotes are marked * and a number. All the notes are at the end.)

So, the Enola Gay is in the news again, as the directors of the Smithsonian Institutions once more attempt to decide how the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima can be displayed in a Politically Correct fashion. I went to see the Enola Gay in 1993 on my honeymoon, and I would like to share my impressions and some pictures.

My wife is a rocket scientist and I am a technophile. It was only natural to spend our honeymoon in Washington, DC, trekking through the various museums of the Smithsonian. We found the Enola Gay near the end of our visit, in bits and pieces, scattered throughout four different buildings in the Paul Garber Facility for Preservation and Restoration. She was sad and abused, oxidized and neglected. But underneath you could see glimpses of what was once the finest aircraft technology anywhere in the world.

The workers at the Garber facility were lovingly restoring that plane. They had already completed one engine themselves. It was shrouded in plastic, awaiting the return of the other engines from a commercial restoration firm. At the other end of the building, most of one wing had been reassembled, with nacelles ready to accept the engines. The other wing lay in pieces, stacked up elsewhere.

Nearby, other workers were rescuing a Japanese fighter/bomber built to fold down and launch from a submarine. The job was just beginning; you could hardly tell that it had been a plane. Elsewhere, a lone craftsman had devoted four years of his life to restoring a junked British fighter. He was about halfway done. There were all manner of aircraft, from every age and country, from war and from peace.

We came away from that visit with a wistful feeling of how such a mighty machine as a B29 had fallen near to dust, and admiration for those who labored to restore her, and other historic aircraft, for the study of generations to come.

I also carried away admiration for the crew of that fateful mission. They took off into the unknown, burdened with a single bomb that exceeded the cargo capacity of their plane. They rumbled down the runway with a load so dangerous that it had to be partially disassembled until airborne. They dropped on Hiroshima a question mark, for even the makers of that device were uncertain what effect it would have *1. It ended the war. That makes the men who so risked their lives heroes in my book, and no apologies to the P.C. crowd about it. The men and their vehicle deserve an undiluted place in the history of aviation.

I am aware of the human price paid at ground-zero. Instant death, slow death, and long suffering. The lucky ones died right away. And the Emperor was too proud to give in, so we dropped another bomb on Nagasaki. More death and suffering, and finally a sudden end to the war that otherwise would have cost hundreds of thousands of additional American lives. A war that we did not start, and that we reluctantly ended with the first, and hopefully last, time that humanity used atomic energy in anger.

We must not minimize the human cost of that war. Let the Smithsonian build an exhibit depicting the horrors of Hiroshima - and Nagasaki, too. But let them include Japanese prison camps and Dresden and Bataan. Let them include the fifty Allied POWs murdered in cold blood after the "Great Escape". Let them include Executive Order 9066. Let them include Pearl Harbor. Let them build a permanent exhibit that shows the terrible cost of war, on all sides. Let us build an exhibit that will remind future generations what price is paid when nations collide in war. Perhaps it will teach our grandchildren to live more peaceful lives.

But don't put that exhibit next to the Enola Gay. She has earned a unique place in the annals of aviation history. The permanent Exhibit on War would be better placed in some other institution of the Smithsonian, one better suited to the study of humanity than the machines that humans built.

- Dennis Griesser

*1 - The bomb dropped on Hiroshima used uranium in a "shotgun" configuration. The only previous test of an atomic weapon, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, used plutonium in an "implosion" configuration. The technology is completely different. Furthermore, there was skepticism throughout the top ranks of the U.S. military concerning any nuclear weapon. One such skeptic was Admiral William Leahy, who said, "The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."

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