Enola Gay plane

[Swift Terror 0]

Well, today IS the 100th anniversary of the Wright Bros. first flight and that had me thinking of the brand new Smithsonian Air & Space annex museum near Wash., D.C. (http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/)

 

This museum has many aviation artifacts, including the B-29 Superfortress known as the Enola Gay. This plane is now the subject of protests by several groups--just as the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian building was several years ago.

 

 

By Shannon Sollinger

12/16/2003

 

 

At 10 a.m. Monday, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum annex at Dulles International Airport opened its doors to the public. It will be open, free of charge, from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day of the year except Dec. 25.

 

 

It took more than two decades of dreaming, planning, pleading and fundraising.

 

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is large enough to tuck the entire Air and Space Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C., into its main hangar. It includes an observation tower, classrooms, IMAX theater, food court, museum shop and the world's largest collection of airplanes, spacecraft and the artifacts that go with them.

 

Anti-nuclear demonstrators from Peace Action and a group dedicated to highlighting the Enola Gays' role in starting the age of nuclear terror marked the opening with a protest at the Enola Gay, on exhibit in the center of the new annex.

 

Demonstrators were allowed to gather at 11 a.m. at the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb in war time on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. They exhorted the crowd – largely photographers and reporters – to join them in a "litany of repentance and hope" for the 140,000 Japanese who died that day, and for the thousands who died in the following days and weeks and months of radiation sickness and burns.

 

Peace Action is a Silver Spring-based group devoted to nuclear disarmament. The Enola Gay group has a Washington, D.C., phone number. "To exalt the Enola Gay, which caused an unprecedented atrocity, is completely unacceptable," reads the group's flier announcing the opening protest.

 

Two demonstrators were arrested after one threw a glass bottle filled with red paint at the Enola Gay from a catwalk above the plane. Thomas K. Siemer, 73, of Columbus, Ohio, was charged with destruction of property and loitering. Gregory Wright, 55, of Hagerstown, Md., was charged with loitering after flopping down on the hangar floor and disregarding orders from Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority guards to get up and move on.

 

The bottle allegedly thrown by Siemer bounced off the plane's fuselage near the landing gear assembly, ricocheted forward and shattered on the gray floor of the hall. The aluminum skin of the plane was torn, said Claire Browne, director of public affairs for the Air and Space Center. The extent of damage, and the cost to make repairs, was not known, she said.

 

Most visitors went about their business – posing in front of the Yankee Clipper for photos, yards from the demonstrators. Some museum visitors did react. "Go away, you didn't fight the war," called out one. "Go back to Russia where you belong," said another.

 

The exhibit also attracted several elderly Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima attack. They did not object to the display of the plane, said one. They do object to not including an account of the damage wrought that day.

 

Smithsonian curators have attempted to steer clear of political controversy by including only technical information in the display.

 

The Enola Gay is only one of 82 aircraft that rest on the hangar floor and swoop down from the ceiling 10 stories up. The Udvar-Hazy Center is 1,000 feet long and will, when complete, house "the world's largest complex of air and space artifacts," said John R. Dailey, National Air and Space Museum director.

 

Civilian aircraft fill the south end of the cavernous building – the Concorde, the Yankee Clipper, Piper Cubs, crop dusters, barn stormers and aerobatic specialists.

 

The Winnie Mae – "experimental" emblazoned over the U.S. Mail/TWA logo on the nose -- rests on the floor not far from the Boeing 307 Stratoliner and just behind the Pulseworks simulator, which takes groups of 15 or so passengers on a 3-D "flight" to the International Space Station.

 

At the north end, the military aircraft – the SR-71 Blackbird, the Aichi Seiran (a Japanese plane designed to collapse for transport in a submarine), German Fokkers, and scores of biplanes, propeller planes and jets that took the world to war in the last century.

 

Visitors enter the museum on a two-story-high observation deck, eye to eye with the SR-71 and the space shuttle Enterprise.

 

Scott Willey, of Fair Oaks, and a 27-year Air Force veteran, was one of 55 volunteers on duty for opening day to guide visitors through the collection. His job was to answer questions about the SR-71 – the fastest (Mach 3), highest traveling (85,000 feet) plane ever made.

 

The last SR-71 flew 13 years ago, said Willey. It was operational from 1966 to 1989, and was replaced by spy satellites when its operating costs edged up more than $85,000 an hour.

 

"But it had unpredictability," said Willey. The laws of mechanics bind the satellites to a fixed route.

 

While on active duty, Willey commanded a maintenance squadron that hooked up with the SR-71 in mid-flight to refill its gas tanks. "My view was from about up there," he said, pointing at the entry hall two stories up.

 

He also helped spiff up the Enterprise for opening day. "That was a thrill."

 

The Stone Bridge High School Marching Band entertained visitors who waited in line to get in – and through the security magnetometers – for an hour or more. Junior Tony Russow and senior Kristen Price got caught up in the Enola Gay demonstration as they took their first tour of the museum.

 

"You can't change what happened," said Russow. "Some people are making a big deal out of this."

 

"It's history," said Price.

 

As for the collection, "the planes they have here are the coolest," said Russow.

 

A demonstrator went to work to educate Russow about the "slippery slope" of nuclear proliferation the world started down when that first bomb dropped from the Enola Gay.

 

 

Throwing red paint at the plane? Aw, don't hurt the nice little planey waney.

 

 

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7484979.htm

 

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...n20031214a6.htm

 

http://www.zwire.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=...id=506035&rfi=6

[C Dubya 04 0]

I don't get why people protest these kinds of things. Whether you agree with what happened or not, the plane was part of an amazingly significant historical event and should be on display. I wish the museum hadn't shied away from putting together a description of the Hiroshima bombing. Ignoring it won't make protestors go away, and it's ignoring the significance of the plane.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Too bad those protestors didn't demonstrate in Hiroshima when the Enola Gay flew over that city...

[Guest Cerebus]

For good or ill, your choice, to deny that the Enola Gay is not a staggering historical artifact is plain stupid. Does anyone know if Auchwitz (sp?) has since been turned into a museum?

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

For good or ill, your choice, to deny that the Enola Gay is not a staggering historical artifact is plain stupid. Does anyone know if Auchwitz (sp?) has since been turned into a museum?

Museum?

 

You have no vision.

 

I think it would make a dang fine amusement park...

[Guest MikeSC]

For good or ill, your choice, to deny that the Enola Gay is not a staggering historical artifact is plain stupid. Does anyone know if Auchwitz (sp?) has since been turned into a museum?

I honestly don't know. I do remember the crew of Monty Python discussing how when they went to Germany to write some shows in German for German TV, they were put up IN Auschwitz.

 

When they arrived, nobody would open the gate, so one of them (whichever one has died --- the name escapes me) said "Tell them we're Jewish" --- and the gates suddenly opened.

-=Mike

...Actually DID hear the story on HBO's special about them from the Colorado Comedy Festival a few years back

[Guest JMA]

"Go back to Russia where you belong," said another.

Speaking of people living in the past...

[Guest JMA]

In all seriousness, I have no problem with protestors...as long as they remain civil. Vandalizing a historical object in a museum isn't being civil.

[Firestarter 0]

All I have to say is this: God bless and keep you, President Truman. I'm grateful beyond measure for your courage and wisdom, and of all the people who suffered on August 6th, 1945, my sympathies are foremost with you for the awful decision you had to make.

Edited December 17, 2003 by Cancer Marney

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Now that's a Democrat I'd vote for...

[Hogan Made Wrestling 0]

"Go back to Russia where you belong," said another.

Speaking of people living in the past...

Could be worse, they could have called it the USSR.

 

As for the actual story: do these people not understand the concept of a museum? I mean, I could possibly understand protesting it if they were riding it down Pennsylvania ave. on a float, but really. I hope these people never go to the Imperial War Museum in London and see the stuff collected there.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Protesting for the sake that it shouldn't be in a museum is dumb, but I do agree that they should do more than just display technical information from the plane. It's more important than an engine, wings, and a payload.

[NoCalMike 0]

protestors seem to be way offbase with their "cause"

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

So I guess we should ban any sort of weapon, ever, from any museum, because it helped lead to the invention of the atomic bomb?

[MrRant 0]

Just another example of people who don't understand history. The only thing these yippies probably know is that "They dropped an atomic bomb and killed x amount of people!"

 

Morons.

[Guest SideFXs]

Will Siemer have to pay for the damages? I mean this B-29 flew many missions and was never damaged. Then this insane protestor damages the fuselage with a glass bottle, in a museum! Of course, as usual, these nuts are coming at this from the wrong perspective. "America is to blame" "Its Americas fault." They conveniently forget or refuse to believe the facts and reasons. They just want a reason to hate America.

 

I want to mention that Hitler's physicists almost had the bomb first. They knew how to make one, except the technology to produce sub-critical plutonium was not yet developed. Hitler opted to shelve his nuclear program, in favor of the buzz-bomb and v-2 rocket. His first target for this nuclear program was New York City. When Germany surrendered the German physicists had finally cracked the plutonium problem and sent German and Japanese scientist, with the material to built a bomb, in a U-boat back to Japan. The U-boat was intercepted, in the Atlantic, near Cuba. However there was still the possibility that Japan had the technology. An invasion of Japan would have cost 500,000 American lives. Using the Atom bomb meant saving American lives and Japanese lives too, and preventing Japan from using nuclear technology, thus ending WWII.

 

Perhaps Siemer forgot we entered the war, after Japan attacked us.

 

I wonder when we will find out, from Saddam, that Germany supplied him with nuclear reactors to produce plutonium. Do you think he would have used them? There are many big German companies, from der Pateranlegen (the Fatherland) Pre-WWII. They haven't forgotten who won and who lost. And the whole of Germany is only 14 years old. Remember East Germany? I'll stop because I am getting away from the subject.

[Anakin Flair 0]

For good or ill, your choice, to deny that the Enola Gay is not a staggering historical artifact is plain stupid. Does anyone know if Auchwitz (sp?) has since been turned into a museum?

I think I remember hearing about it being a sort of tourist attraction, where peoplecould beled through it to see what it was like. So people wouldn't forget what happened there.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Well, today IS the 100th anniversary of the Wright Bros. first flight and that had me thinking of the brand new Smithsonian Air & Space annex museum near Wash., D.C. (http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/)

Speaking of the Wright Brothers. Most important achievment or invention of the 20th century.

[Swift Terror 0]

On a side note:

 

Wright brothers reenactment flops in the mud

Wed 17 December, 2003 21:49

 

By Jim Loney

 

KILL DEVIL HILLS, North Carolina (Reuters) - Modern-day aviators have failed to duplicate the pioneering flight of the Wright brothers a century ago as a replica of their primitive 1903 flying machine flopped into the mud.

 

On a rain-soaked field in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, where the bicycle mechanics from Ohio achieved the age-old dream on December 17, 1903, an exact copy of the wood-and-cloth Wright Flyer trundled down a wooden rail but failed to generate the speed and lift it needed to fly in an unreliable breeze.

 

On another attempt hours later, the engine was cranked but the wind died and the aircraft did not try a takeoff.

 

The two attempts, part of a celebration of the first century of flight that lured astronaut Neil Armstrong and a host of aviation luminaries to North Carolina's Outer Banks, came hours after U.S. President George W. Bush lauded Orville and Wilbur Wright's achievement as a triumph of American ingenuity.

 

"The Wright brothers' invention belongs to the world but the Wright brothers belong to America," Bush told a crowd of soggy spectators at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. "We take special pride in their qualities of discipline, persistence, optimism and imagination."

 

Downpours hit Kill Devil Hills early Wednesday and light winds that followed forced organizers of the weeklong event to postpone its highlight, an attempt to reenact the Wrights' original 12-second, 120-foot (36 kms) flight in the muddy field where they made history.

 

The Wrights made four flights that day. The last, by Wilbur, measured 852 feet (260 meters) and lasted 59 seconds.

 

The reenactment was to have been made at 10:35 a.m., the same time Orville Wright lifted off a century ago, but was delayed for nearly two hours by light winds. Organizers said the replica needed 10-22 mph (16 to 35 kph) of wind to fly.

 

Following a series of unsuccessful attempts to crank the balky engine, the Flyer's twin propellers came to life. Kevin Kochersberger, a 42-year-old flight instructor and engineering professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, guided the replica across the field.

 

UNSTEADY WIND

 

The machine moved slowly down a wooden track but failed to get the needed lift in an unsteady wind, organizers said. Its nose rose briefly before it settled into a mud puddle.

 

The replica crashed once in trials but flew on two other occasions.

 

The weeklong festival attracted and thrilled tens of thousands of aviation buffs, who saw some of the greatest aviators and aircraft of the age.

 

The U.S. military's B-2 Stealth bomber and the Osprey short-takeoff-and-landing craft made appearances, along with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first men on the moon, Chuck Yeager, the pilot who first broke the sound barrier, and John Glenn, the former senator and astronaut.

 

"Here at the Wright Brothers National Memorial, we remember one small machine and we honor the giants who flew it," said Bush, who flew to North Carolina to take part in the festivities but left before the reenactment was to take place.

 

Air Force One, with the president on board, flew over the Wright Memorial before heading back to Washington.

 

The failed reenactment after a century of giant leaps in aviation highlighted the ingenuity of the brothers, who constructed a primitive 605-pound (274 kg) biplane out of spruce, ash and muslin.

 

The Wright Flyer had a 40-foot (12-meter) wingspan, was powered by a 12-horsepower engine and had a top speed of just 30 mph (48 kph).

 

"We salute Orville and Wilbur Wright, who may have the best seat in the house (today) - a view from above," said Amanda Wright Lane, a descendant of the brothers.

 

It is a testament to the incredible feat of the two Ohio inventors that modern day pilots failed to duplicate their flight.

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

All I have to say is this: God bless and keep you, President Truman. I'm grateful beyond measure for your courage and wisdom, and of all the people who suffered on August 6th, 1945, my sympathies are foremost with you for the awful decision you had to make.

*feels worse for the thousands of innocent people killed by the bombs*

 

 

Not that I don't agree that the bombs had to be dropped, but I feel alot worse for the civilians who were killed. To this day people are still suffering the effects of Truman's choice.

[Guest MikeSC]

All I have to say is this: God bless and keep you, President Truman. I'm grateful beyond measure for your courage and wisdom, and of all the people who suffered on August 6th, 1945, my sympathies are foremost with you for the awful decision you had to make.

*feels worse for the thousands of innocent people killed by the bombs*

 

 

Not that I don't agree that the bombs had to be dropped, but I feel alot worse for the civilians who were killed. To this day people are still suffering the effects of Truman's choice.

Judging by the fighting on Okinawa and Guadalcanal --- if we had invaded Japan, it would have been WORSE for them.

 

And if Russia really got going and attacked Japan --- it would have been MUCH worse.

 

Truman did the best thing given the situation.

-=Mike

[Guest cobainwasmurdered]

I didn't say he didn't.

 

I said I felt more sorry for the Japanese civilians than I did for Truman or anyone else.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Now that's a Democrat I'd vote for...

Oh, puh-lease. He sat back while China became a Communist nation, for starters. Secondly, he let Russia pretty much freely chip away at Europe.

[Guest MikeSC]

Now that's a Democrat I'd vote for...

Oh, puh-lease. He sat back while China became a Communist nation, for starters. Secondly, he let Russia pretty much freely chip away at Europe.

Then I suppose we should REALLY hate FDR for giving away Eastern Europe to Stalin, huh?

-=Mike

...Stalin OWNED him at, I believe, Yalta

[2GOLD 0]

Those who refuse to remember history are doomed to forever repeat it. Wanting to hide the sins of our past just because means one day we will commit the same sin again and again.

 

Thurman was giving no option and you can bet if he could have had another option, he would have taken it. I feel horrible for the innocent civilians and I also feel horrible that Thurman had to pass on knowing the act of pure terror he had to commit in order to save many more lives. He had to live with the fact he had to choose between killing all those innocent people or invading and killing not only those people but many many more.

 

The constant stupidity of those who do not understand the past is what forever will scare me the most. Just like removing the horrors of slavery and WWII from our history books in school will one day doom our society to just re-create the nightmare.