What Happened to the Enola Gay After Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay changed the war in a single morning. Then America spent almost forty years keeping her out of sight. Visitors carried off her parts, birds nested in her tail, and when the Smithsonian finally tried to show her, the fight reached the United States Senate. This documentary follows the real Enola Gay, B-29 serial 44-86292, from the secret 509th Composite Group compound on Tinian to the hangar in Chantilly, Virginia, where she stands today. The mission hour by hour, the copilot's notebook, the Crossroads tests she was pushed out of, seven years parked outdoors and unguarded at Andrews Air Force Base, the veterans who found her cut in half in a shed, the 1995 exhibition that cost the museum's director his job, and the label she carries now. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:30 Victor Eighty-Two 3:13 Two Forty-Five 5:39 Forty-Three Seconds 8:05 The Notebook 10:38 Shunted Aside 13:03 Nobody's Hangar 16:25 A Wreck 19:06 A War of Vengeance 21:59 Chantilly SOURCES Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, object file A19500100000 and "Enola Gay Chronology" (1995-98) National Air and Space Museum press release on the completed restoration (2003) Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (Copernicus, 1996) John T. Correll, "Revisionism Gone Wrong", Air Force Magazine, April 2004; "The Last Act at Air and Space", September 1994 Atomic Heritage Foundation: "Tibbets on Hiroshima" (509th Composite Group operational history) and "Controversy over the Enola Gay Exhibition" U.S. Department of Energy, The Manhattan Project: An Interactive History, "The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima" Congressional Record, September 19, 1994, S. Res. 257 Statement of Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman, January 30, 1995 George R. Caron oral history, Atomic Heritage Foundation "Voices of the Manhattan Project" Associated Press obituaries of Paul W. Tibbets Jr. (2007) and Theodore Van Kirk (2014) FOOTAGE & PHOTOS All footage and photographs are U.S. government works in the public domain: National Archives and Records Administration (RG 18, 77, 208, 330, 342, 374, 428, 434), U.S. Air Force "The Air Force Story", Department of Defense (DVIDS), and U.S. Navy combat camera. Present-day photographs of the Enola Gay at the Udvar-Hazy Center were dedicated to the public domain by their authors (CC0 / PD: Gary Todd, Kurt Kaiser, Ken Thomas, Wilson44691, NoVaPhotographer, Richelieu08, via Wikimedia Commons); U.S. Capitol photographs by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, public domain. Archival document graphics made for this film. The appearance of U.S. Department of War (DoW) visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement. MUSIC "Final Battle of the Dark Wizards" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License — http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... "Crusade" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License — http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... "Clash Defiant" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) — Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License — http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Narration is synthetic; all images in the film are real archival or government photographs and footage, with no AI-generated images. #EnolaGay #B29 #WW2 #Hiroshima #LostWarbirds