So only the front fuselage of the Enola Gay sits behind locked and guarded doors in a closed-off museum gallery, while curators slowly-and now cautiously-build an exhibit around the B-29 to tell its story. Even one as cavernous as the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum on the Mall here.
It is simply too big and too heavy to be displayed in one piece in a museum. When fully assembled, the most famous bomber aircraft of World War II is 99 feet long and has a 144-foot wingspan. Shrink-wrapped, wingless and with its tail section missing, the Enola Gay lies silently amid the debris of museum construction, like a beached whale awaiting its fate.
