'The drastic reduction of the Enola Gay exhibit is a tragic loss to all Americans. In 2004 the Department of Energy repaired and repainted the artifact at its Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.Ĭlick here to return to the World War II Gallery. The subject is how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was to berepresented by a museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Robert Musil of Physicians for Social Responsibility accused Heyman of buckling to right-wing political pressure. When constructed in 1945, the "Little Boy" on display was an operational weapon, but it has been completely demilitarized for display purposes. Weighing about 9,000 pounds, it produced an explosive force equal to 20,000 tons of TNT. The newly-configured exhibit, which opens to the public Wednesday, centers on the front half of the Enola Gays fuselage and also contains its tail, an engine and a facsimile of the atomic bomb it.
The result of the Manhattan Project, begun in June 1942, "Little Boy" was a gun-type weapon, which detonated by firing one mass of uranium down a cylinder into another mass to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It was delivered by the B-29 Enola Gay (on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum), it detonated at an altitude of 1,800 feet over Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. Memorializing Congress and the President to Cancel the Smithsonian Enola Gay Exhibit.
The Mk I bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," was the first nuclear weapon used in warfare.