The Smithsonian took possession of the Enola Gay in 1949 in working order, but with the outbreak of the Korean War the Enola Gay had to be moved from its home at Park Ridge, where it was now in the way, and was transferred temporarily to Pyote Air Force base in Texas before finally being moved to Andrews Air Force base in 1953. The importance of the museum, particularly to the Air Force and the veterans who served in it, were inevitably going to have an interest in the preservation and display of this most famous of aircraft. The NASM’s decision to display the Enola Gay in this most historic of years, as the most popular museum in the world, dedicated to preserving and showcasing the most advanced air technology meant that its treatment of this aircraft was always going to be perceived as that of the American Government, as official history.
Fifty years later with the commemoration of the end of World War II, this highly emotive event would be brought to the forefront and with it would come a fight between different groups with different agendas and perceptions of that event. The Enola Gay controversy that erupted in 1994 – 1995 with the planned exhibition by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum of the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, had its beginnings on 6th August 1945.
