Enola Gay

The "Enola Gay" (for the plane alone; for the whole museum) - darkometer rating : 4 - This is the original B-29 bomber plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima – now an exhibit at an aviation museum at Washington Dulles Airport. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: The A-bomb attack on Hiroshima , Japan , carried out by the USA 's "Enola Gay" B-29 bomber, changed the world forever – not only did it more or less wipe out that Japanese city in an unprecedented manner, it was also the beginning of the atomic age, which during the Cold War could have heralded the end of the world. As such this one plane could hardly be of darker significance. In the USA the dropping of the A-bomb is widely seen as good thing, though, as it allegedly helped in shortening the final stages of WWII in the Pacific , thus saving hundreds of thousands of lives that may otherwise have been lost in a land invasion of the Japanese homeland. In Japan it's seen somewhat differently, as you might expect. For more on the decision to drop the bomb and the validity of various pro and counter arguments see under Hiroshima and Nagasaki . After WWII, the "Enola Gay" remained in service for a while, and also took part in Operation Crossroads in Bikini (although not in the role of dropping another bomb), but soon after that she was decommissioned. It was, however, decided early on that she should be preserved. So in 1946 she was handed over to the Smithsonian Institute. For decades she was moved from one storage facility to another – always out of public view – where she also underwent major restoration work in the 1980s.