The Enola Gay was then used as the advance weather reconnaissance aircraft for the follow-up attack on Nagasaki that killed a further 70,000 people. The bombing was carried out on a sunny day at 8.15am from an altitude of 9,632 metres. The pneumatic doors to the “bomb bay” that once held the atomic weapon were swung open for television cameras, but Daso said a decision had not been made on whether to leave them open when the plane goes on public view. President Harry Truman told the American people, “We have unleashed the power of the sun.” The Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy”, on the Japanese port city of Hiroshima, killing more than 140,000 people and leaving tens of thousands disfigured and suffering from lingering radiation illness. “This airplane is a part of our history and it is a part of who we are,” said Dik Daso, curator of the aeronautics division of the museum. 6, 1945,” is written on the side of the shiny aircraft, with its transparent cockpit nose and defensive machine guns strutting out of the tail. The reassembled B-29 Superfortress was unveiled to the media on Monday, in a hangar near Dulles International Airport at the museum’s new annex which opens on 15 December.
