How to display Enola Gay and the Bomb

[fotobass]

Mass bombing raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life.

So what in this sentence isn't true? Were they not mass bombing raids, was there not heavy loss of life of life, or was there not vast destruction?

[rwdfresno]

While you are correct, I still think the NMUSAF has the better display. The just kind of say, this is what this did, and it ended the war.

Personally I think the NMUSAF is just a better museum overall. In fact I think it is the best museum of it's type in the world. The NASM has fine collection but personally I haven't much cared for the way things are displayed or their prioritization of which artifacts to restore and display.

[rwdfresno]

Quote:
Mass bombing raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life.

So what in this sentence isn't true? Were they not mass bombing raids, was there not heavy loss of life of life, or was there not vast destruction?

Just like this article demonstrates you are only presenting part of the story. I think that the following quote from the article is a bit more telling as to the issue of slanting history.

"The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than 5 million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."

This has an obvious SLANT in one direction it is not a simple presentation of facts. funny how it leaves out the "by the way the Germans attacked the UK and targeted civilians specifically, oh and by the way they they launched rockets into the UK civilian population, oh and by the way they killed 6 million innocent people, oh and by the way the Germans did bizarre scientific experiments including doing surgeries on Jews while the were awake and sexually tortured and mutilated Jewish women for the sake of science, oh and by the way the Allies won the war so apparent something in their strategy worked.

[k5083]

Wow. I take half a day off from WIX and look what happens. Well, even though I helped instigate this topic, you guys have done such a good job of laying out the sides that I have not much more to add.

I think rwdfresno's last post illustrates the fallacy of his own position that you can just "state the facts" and avoid politics or interpretation. There are an infinite number of facts to be stated about anything. You have to choose some. The selection you make will result in a "slant."

Consider the very decision that the B-29 Enola Gay and the crew are important and worth preserving or remembering. This position is by no means self-evident. Consider the following quote from the second link I posted yesterday, which by the way is well worth reading if you haven't yet.

Strategies of air warfare are certainly a most important historical subject, but this is quite a different one. This has to do with -- and I am looking for a word stronger than "propriety" -- . . . the validity . . . of exhibiting the Enola Gay in this institution. As I see it, she has a noble distinction as an aircraft, like any one of 50 others. The mission over Japan was not in any tactical or operational sense distinctive.
The Japanese were essentially defeated. We were flying airplanes all over the empire, at will. I was the operations officer of the task force at that time -- with Japan and defined ports for us to strike. And except for accidents, we didn't lose any airplanes.

So there was nothing aeronautical about it. The thing that made the mission distinctive was . . . that we used the nuclear weapon for the first time against human beings. . . .

The writer of these words was Admiral Noel Gayler, former commander in chief of Pacific forces and later Director of the National Security Agency, speaking as an advisor to the NASM when it first considered exhibiting Enola Gay. Not exactly an anti-American pinko, although he has turned anti-nuke.

Or consider this position on whether the NASM should display Enola Gay upon its opening in 1976:

What we are interested in here are the truly historic aircraft. I wouldn't consider the one that dropped the bomb on Japan as belonging to that category.

That's Barry Goldwater talking!

The Gayler-Goldwater point is that from a technical and broader historical perspective, the Enola Gay was just a delivery system and its crew were highly trained truck drivers. The real point of the mission was THE BOMB and its causes and effects. The aircraft and crew are not really important from a historical perspective except as a focus for talking about THE BOMB.

Now that's just one view, of course, and by placing the Enola Gay and Bockscar prominently on display, NASM and USAFM (sorry I'm a curmudgeon, I'll keep calling it the USAFM no matter what it changes its name to) disagree with Adm. Gayler. They appear to think that the tactical and operational aspects of the mission are important. Or, perhaps, their focus on those aspects are a way of dealing with THE BOMB without actually saying anything important about it.

Now, I don't hold this against the USAFM. The USAFM is more or less explicitly a PR/propaganda device for the USAF and no one would have it be otherwise. THE BOMB was not an Air Force project; its delivery was. So we expect that museum to focus on the USAAF's role in its delivery and that's all well and good.

As for NASM, as a Smithsonian museum, we might reasonably expect that to have reflect a broader picture of American views than merely the military's perspective. Given the military's role and influence in Congress, public opinion, and the NASM's own Advisory Board, which is basically required by statute to be dominated by career military officers, that is perhaps not realistic. So it is not too surprising that the NASM presents things pretty much the way the USAFM does and any deviation from that by a rogue Director gets him burned badly and quickly.

We might also expect the NASM to be a seat of scholarship on aviation history. Good historical scholarship almost always takes a point of view. Historians don't just assemble facts and data about the past, they put them into narratives driven by a thesis that they think and hope is useful in understanding what happened, why, and with what effect. Then they disagree with each other and get into arguments; it is all part of the scholarly process. It is also not in the nature of good history to confine itself arbitrarily and narrowly to just one aspect of something (like the "aviation" component) but rather to address larger issues of society and culture. Such a narrow focus, driven by personal interest in the thing studied for its own sake, is the hallmark of buff literature rather than historical scholarship. Now, again, the NASM is closely watched by military people and vets' lobbyists to be sure that any scholarship it undertakes resembles what the military would do; and military scholarship is to scholarship as military music is to music -- suitable for the services' purposes, but not much good otherwise.

Does all this really matter? Maybe not so much. Enola Gay is an opportunity for serious discourse about THE BOMB, but certainly not the only one. All those liberal-wiggie academic historians, and their reactionary colleagues, have no need of a big shiny aeroplane to study and debate the whys and wherefores of THE BOMB. The Enola Gay exhibit might be an occasion for presenting some of that research to the broader public, but the public may not be interested in, or ready to, hear it. Public discourse on WWII is still dominated by an unreexamined repetition of the themes of wartime propaganda, now overlain by a sloppy layer of greatest-generation sentimentality and opportunistic false analogies to the wars and issues of the present day; this is certainly what comes over the loudspeakers at the airshows we attend. Maybe we need another few decades to see that clearly or maybe, like many long-debunked "facts" about our own revolutionary war, it will be enshrined permanently in national myth. There are certainly those who are ideologically committed to seeing it so.

August

[mike furline]

Blah, Blah, Blah, Will it ever end?

Perhaps we should lay blame on the Japanese sub commander who sunk the Indianapolis. If he had done it sooner none of this would of happened.

I for one am glad the Enola Gay is on display. I am also glad the U.S. designed, built and used the Atomic bomb first. It's no fun being second.

I'm tired of hearing post war born people bad mouth who was more at fault 65 years ago. All you great "thinkers" out there, I hate to burst your bubble, but all the thinking in the world won't change what happened. If the country "you" live in was so morally reprehensible for what they did back then, move somewhere else so you can feel good about yourself.

Grow some balls & suck it up. WWII is over and we know who won.

For those of you that I have offended, see the above sentence. Have a nice day.

Mike

Last edited by mike furline on Wed Feb 14, 2007 4:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[mustangdriver]

Mike, I loved your quote. That should be a T-shirt! Fresno, I think the same about the NMUSAF compared to the NASM but I just figured that maybe I was favoring the one, because I volunteer there. Either way I would like to buy you guys a couple of beers.

[bdk]

The fact that the curators need to tell the story in French as well as English adds another challenge to the job. Made you think?

No no no no no! No French at Udvar-Hazy! My final answer!!!!

[6trn4brn]

WOOHOO!!! Well put Mike I knew there was more than one of us who is sick and tired of all of the big-brained people trying their damndest to force-feed us this pathetic crap about us being wrong for dropping THE BOMB! Get over it already! If you are offended by the sight of the Enola Gay or Bockscar or what those brave men did that flew them, then I say shame on you

[Bill Greenwood]

Well Mike and 6trn, you have certainly let us know how you feel. I see, however, a few holes in what seems to be your line of Bomb em. The atomic bomb was certainly invented by those "great thinkers" and "big brained people" you seem to put down. The idea was proposed to Roosevelt by Albert Einstein. Research on his brain after death showed he did have areas more developed than the average. The military man Groves, who oversaw the Manhattan project wrote about how smart these guys like Oppenhiemer were, (although they could be absent minded) their brain was esentually a weapon and glad it was on our side. We do have some pretty deep thinkers on WIX, like K5083, so maybe you have provided some balance.

[mike furline]

Well Mike and 6trn, you have certainly let us know how you feel. I see, however, a few holes in what seems to be your line of Bomb em. The atomic bomb was certainly invented by those "great thinkers" and "big brained people" you seem to put down. The idea was proposed to Roosevelt by Albert Einstein. Research on his brain after death showed he did have areas more developed than the average. The military man Groves, who oversaw the Manhattan project wrote about how smart these guys like Oppenhiemer were, (although they could be absent minded) their brain was esentually a weapon and glad it was on our side. We do have some pretty deep thinkers on WIX, like K5083, so maybe you have provided some balance.

Well Bill you've missed the point completely. Great thinker?

Which country were you hoping developed the BOMB first?

We had great thinkers in 1945! All the "thinking" by todays (2007) great minds won't change 1945.
If we would of had todays great thinkers back in 1945 there would be alot more dead Americans.
Last time I checked the Spitfire was developed by a great thinker to kill people! Maybe we shouldn't Bomb'em as you say, just shoot them down.
Thats never mentioned at museums.

The fact is during a war people will die. All of todays thinking won't change the past nor should our plaques at museums.

F.Y.I. God was on our side during the war!

Have a nice day!

Last edited by mike furline on Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:12 am, edited 3 times in total.

[mustangdriver]

I don't know if we will ever agree, but I think we can all say that we are happy that it is restored, and on display. Maybe it iso ne of those things that just menas something different to each person.

[Edward Soye]

I think rwdfresno's last post illustrates the fallacy of his own position that you can just "state the facts" and avoid politics or interpretation. There are an infinite number of facts to be stated about anything. You have to choose some. The selection you make will result in a "slant."

...

We might also expect the NASM to be a seat of scholarship on aviation history. Good historical scholarship almost always takes a point of view. Historians don't just assemble facts and data about the past, they put them into narratives driven by a thesis that they think and hope is useful in understanding what happened, why, and with what effect. Then they disagree with each other and get into arguments; it is all part of the scholarly process. It is also not in the nature of good history to confine itself arbitrarily and narrowly to just one aspect of something (like the "aviation" component) but rather to address larger issues of society and culture. Such a narrow focus, driven by personal interest in the thing studied for its own sake, is the hallmark of buff literature rather than historical scholarship.

Well said. This is the point I was trying to get at a page back in this discussion and you've presented it very clearly k5083.

And for the record, even though I take the position that a museum like the NASM has an obligation to be a place for academic debate I don't think that means I disrespect the past, those who have served before us and given the (ultimate) sacrifice in the process. As both a modern Air Force officer and a history major I see no contradiction between holding patriotic values, respectful of the efforts of veterans and forming analytical arguments regarding the past.

I'm tired of hearing post war born people bad mouth who was more at fault 65 years ago. All you great "thinkers" out there, I hate to burst your bubble, but all the thinking in the world won't change what happened. If the country "you" live in was so morally reprehensible for what they did back then, move somewhere else so you can feel good about yourself.

Grow some balls & suck it up. WWII is over and we know who won.

Mike - If by "great thinkers" you mean those who engage in historical scholarship then you don't seem to understand the point of such studies. Serious historians explore why things happen, how things happened and the implications of things that have happened - this does not call for moral judgment or "bad mouthing" actions made in the past.

To get a little bit closer to the original topic, I still thing its hard to argue that you can have a display in a museum and NOT show some kind of bias in the process. Selecting facts, even if the most minimal will still send one message or another. Why not show multiple facets of a complicated story? Your own position is only strengthened by raising the opposite stance and showing why your argument is able to overcome the objection.

Perhaps this is the beauty of flying warbirds (and no, I'm not suggesting the Enola Gay should be restored to fly). When an aircraft is flying past in the sky, it is on public display but in many ways not hindered by these same issues we seem unable to agree on with regard to a museum display. Unfortunately, a mute point though regarding one of a kind of very historic examples that are destined for static display in a national museum.

[mike furline]

The 1945 Vet's must be rolling over in thier graves.

[mustangdriver]

If you think that we need to tell both sides of a story about each airplane in a museum, that would take alot of space, space that can better be used to house more airplanes. I think we need a the main info on the aircraft, and then some wartime photos and such. Let's face some not so fun facts. The Enola Gay dropped a bomb on Hiroshima. Was that a nasty weapon? Yes. But it was needed to end that war. Even after one bomb, they did not want to give up. Am I glad that we dropped it first? Yes. Did you guys know that japan was working on a bomb similar to the one we dropped? I wonder if they would have used it. Displaying the Enola Gay is like having Pete Rose in the baseball hall of fame. Some people are going to like it, others will not, but it earned the right to be there. I think that many people are giving just a little bit more credit to the japanese population then deserved. If you want to tell both sides of a story at the B-29, then you must be fair and do the same at the Zero and tell about how these airplanes were used by people that took joy in killing civilians, soldiers, livestock, anything living all through China, started a war with America because we would not give them fuel for this, committed high numbers of war crimes, and armed everyone on the home island for the invasion that was not to come. You have to be fair. You can't just tell their side of the story at the B--29, and not at the Zero.

[Bill Greenwood]

Mike, you wrote to me "Which country were you hoping developed the Bomb first"? Is this a serious question, and if so where do you get any even a hint that I ever wrote anything about another country developing it first? If so, please give me the quotes. I doubt if you can even find such a thing from the other posters on WIX. I think the Japanese would have certainly used the Bomb on us without reservation if they had it first. Unless it was England, Canada, Auatralia we would have had a big problem. Mustang I did not know about any serious Japanese nuclear program, only Nazi research, which is an interesting story on its own.