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Conversely, if you're just visiting the city and don't have a car, it's a bit of a trek. The museum itself is free, but you'll have to pay for that parking.
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Perhaps the best part of the Udvar-Hazy Center is that it's not in DC, which means you don't need to worry about finding parking.
#UDVAR HAZY ENOLA GAY PLUS#
The Enola Gay itself is raised off the floor, near a walkway so you can see it from all sides.īeyond is the the Dash-80, the prototype for the Boeing 707, plus an Air France Concorde and a Lockheed Super Constellation.ĭuring my visit some aircraft, including the Concorde, were shrouded in protective plastic as the museum made repairs to its roof. Also close by are several ultra-rare German aircraft from the end of WWII, like the first jet bomber, the Arado Ar 234, and the push-pull twin-engine Dornier Do 335. I'll get there in a minute.Ī mix of WWII aircraft, from a P-38 to a P-61, are arranged near the Enola Gay. The museum's SR-71 Blackbird, a spectacular Cold War reconnaissance plane, points at the entrance and acts as a vanguard for the Space Shuttle Discovery that sits behind it in its own room. This end of the museum has a mix of fighter aircraft, mostly jets from the latter half of the 20th century. It imparts a feeling of motion and life to an inherently static experience.ĭown a long ramp you're greeted by one of the few surviving aircraft that was at Pearl Harbor, a Sikorski JRS-1. Step beyond the lobby onto a platform at the center of the main hangar, and aircraft spread out to your left and right and hang directly in front of you, as if in flight. The Udvar-Hazy Center, named for the aviation billionaire whose donation enabled the Smithsonian to build it, has one of the most impressive entrances to any museum I've been to. After nearly two decades of restoration, the Enola Gay will be one of the highlights of the museum’s new Udvar-Hazy Center, which is scheduled to open at Dulles International Airport on December 15, 2003.+41 more See all photos Hangars of history This book tells the story of the Enola Gay, the Boeing B-29 program, and the combat operations of the B-29 type. The original, controversial exhibit script was changed, and the final exhibition attracted some 4 million visitors, testifying to the enduring interest in the aircraft and its mission. The aircraft was the primary artifact in an exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum from 1995 to 1998. The Japanese government, which had been preparing a bloody defense against an invasion, surrendered six days later. Three days later, another B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The “Little Boy” bomb exploded with the force of 12.5 kilotons of TNT, nearly destroying the city. The world entered the atomic age in August 1945, when the B-29 Superfortress nicknamed Enola Gay flew some 1,500 miles from the island of Tinian and dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.