Enola Gay

[Axecleaver]

Around Christmas, a dear friend of mine came to visit for a few days with his pregnant wife. She was about four months in with their first and they were excited about it. I knew that this would probably be the last time I'd see him for a few years, even if he didn't. Little children have a way of discouraging frequent travel.

I'd sprained my knee a few days earlier but I didn't want that to stop us from getting out and seeing things. It lent a feeling of ancientness to our days that seemed strange. Two old, familiar friends limping around together at turtle speed.

While his wife visited her family in the area and mine went to work, my friend and I decided to go to the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum which is about five minutes from my house. I was looking forward to seeing the space shuttle they had there, and the Lockheed SR-71 blackbird, and the recently retired Concorde.

As we strolled slowly over the elevated walkways, looking down on the aircraft displays, we came upon the Enola Gay.

"Is that really the Enola Gay?" asked my friend.
"I think it is," I said, "I remember reading it as a footnote in an article about the opening."
"It's just sitting there with all the other airplanes. But I guess... how would you display that?"
"I don't know."
"That machine changed the world in an instant."

There wasn't anything in the museum's literature about the plane, and the website doesn't even list it in the collection. It's as if they're mildly embarassed to admit they have it.

We stood looking at it for a while, silently. Its aluminum frame gleamed with shine. The cockpit had a plexiglass  window into the interior and I could see where the captain sat when he gave the order to drop the bomb.

Everything else seemed to fade a little, until it was this one aircraft sitting in a quiet museum, with the other patrons just whispering ghosts floating around us.

The rest of the day was wintry cold. We reminisced about growing up during the Cold War, practicing bomb drills in primary school and hiding under our desks. My father used a backhoe to start a bomb shelter in our back yard that he wouldn't live to finish.

That night, after we had gone to bed, I dreamed. I dreamed that we were back in the Cold War. I was paired with a Soviet man named Mirror. We would airdrop into different places in Russia, and I would write facts about the things I saw in a notebook while he took notes on what I was doing. I had the impression we were going to do this in the US as well. We did this for many weeks and tried to outsmart each other, but we never managed to get the upper hand no matter what we tried.

I miss those days.

[Rosslyn]

http://www.nasm.si.edu/events/pressroom/releases/110703.htm

(Edited by Rosslyn at 5:27 pm on Dec. 29, 2004)

[Zutroy]

IIRC there was a big deal about how the plane was going to be displayed a few years back. Someone (I'm not sure if they were of japanese descent or not) complained that the plaque describing the plane should list the number of innocent people it killed. It grew legs and pretty soon every interest group on one side or the other was bitching about it.

At the time I never really found out how it all got resolved but I guess they just decided to move it to a lower profile museum.

...must be a slow day at work

(Edited by Zutroy at 4:39 pm on Dec. 29, 2004)