In June 1945, the Enola Gay participated in several flight training and live bombing practice missions in the Marianas. B-29s also represented the first successful large-scale use of pressurized crew compartments. Those aircraft designated for the highly secret 509th Composite Group were outfitted with special engines and propellers and faster-acting pneumatic bomb bay doors.
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Army Air Force as one of 15 "special mission" B-29s in June 1945. Martin Aircraft Factory in Omaha, Neb., and accepted by the U.S. Even Boeing logo caps from the period were tracked down for the center of the pilot and co-pilot's control wheels for a complete restoration of the cockpit. Missing equipment, including radio gear and antenna components, was replaced.
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The airplane's entire outer aluminum skin was painstakingly polished to its original shine. To bring the airplane back as closely as possible to its wartime condition, museum staff, volunteers and interns removed decades of corrosion from metal surfaces. "Jack" Dailey said, "Because of the work of some very talented men and women, future generations will sense first-hand the unalterable significance of this aircraft in World War II and human history. In presenting the reassembled Enola Gay,museum director Gen. The center will ultimately house the 80 percent of the national collection of aircraft and large space artifacts not on view at the Mall building or on loan. The Udvar-Hazy Center, with an aviation hangar 10 stories high and the length of three football fields, allows the museum to display for the first time its largest artifacts. It will be displayed at the new center raised off the floor on 8-foot-high stands to accommodate other aircraft under its large wings. With a wingspan of 141 feet and a gross weight of 137,500 pounds, the Enola Gay is too large and too heavy to be housed intact in the museum's flagship building on the National Mall in Washington. The airplane's components had been transported to the center earlier this year over a period of weeks in 12 truckloads from the museum's storage and preservation facility in Suitland, Md.
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The airplane's forward and aft fuselage sections, wings, landing gear, engines, propellers and vertical stabilizer were brought together for the first time since 1960 in an arduous operation this spring and summer in the Udvar-Hazy (pronounced OOD-var HAH-zee) Center's aviation hangar. Restoration work on the Enola Gay began in 1984 and involved a total of some 300,000 staff hours. Udvar-Hazy Center, the museum's new companion facility in Northern Virginia, which opens to the public Dec. The airplane, which received the most extensive restoration in the museum's history, will be on display at the Steven F. 18) unveiled the newly reassembled Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress used to drop the first atomic bomb in combat. Monday, Aug| 12:00am Media Inquiries Claire Brown 20 Public InquiriesĢ0 More information The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum today (Aug.