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. 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.
