In the 1990s, the Smithsonian Institutions National Air and Space Museum laid plans to use the Enola Gay as a prop in a political horror show. Fifty years after Hiroshima, the airplane flew into controversy of a different sort.
The bombing of Hiroshima was a famous event, a defining moment of the 20th century, but the aircraft that flew the mission was largely forgotten and left to deteriorate, until restoration finally began in 1984. By eliminating the need for an invasion of the Japanese home islands, the atomic bombs prevented casualties, both American and Japanese, that would have exceeded the death tolls at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. However, these missions brought an end to a war in which 17 million people had died at the hands of the Japanese empire between 19.2 Until the atomic bombs fell, Japan had not been ready to end the war. At Hiroshima, more than half the city was destroyed in a flash, and 80,000 were killed instantly. 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
