hope to see you again sometime here at the wilson center. thank you for coming. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> you are watching american

history tv. >> each week, american artifact takes you to museums and historic places. mr. crouch: hi, my name is tom crouch. i am the senior curator of aeronautics at the national air and space museum. and we are here this morning at the national air and space museum. the steven center. this is the place where our museum keeps all of its largest objects and some pretty darn spectacular things when you come right down to it. you are looking here at the b-29 enola gay, named after the pilot's mother. paul tibbets was the pilot who

flew this airplane to hiroshima, japan on august 6, 1945, and dropped the world's first atomic bomb on an enemy target. again, he named the airplane after his mother, the enola gay. it is certainly the most emotionally laden artifact, i think it's safe to say, in the entire collection of the national air and space museum. however you come down on the issues that it represents, atomic warfare and that kind of thing, it sort of is an icon that wraps all of those issues up in itself, so people do have interesting reactions to this airplane on all kinds of sides of the issue. it is a b-29 that was built not by the boeing company, which designed the b-29. enola gay was built at the martin plant near omaha, nebraska. and they picked out a string of

b-29's on the line at that plant and designated them as silverplate airplanes. the silverplate airplanes were the ones that were going to be slightly modified to carry nuclear weapons. they removed all of the armament from them with the exception of the tailgun and they made some other modifications. they had to change the bomb bay a bit to be able to fit either the uranium bomb or the plutonium bomb, fat man. and so this is one of the silverplate b-29's. the b-29 boxcar, which dropped the bomb on nagsaki three days after the hiroshima bomb, has also been preserved. it's at the u.s. air force museum in dayton, ohio. again, as i said, paul tibbets was the pilot of the airplane,

and he was the guy who had actually created the 509th composite group that was created specifically to deliver atomic weapons on designated targets, and he picked a lot of the guys who were in the unit, did the training, and was just the absolute head of the 509, so he decided to fly that first mission himself. the airplane survived because the air force specifically saved it. when it came back from the pacific, it was in operational air force hands for a little while, and then it was shipped out to the desert for a while to be specifically preserved. and ultimately, it was delivered to an air force base here in washington where it remained for quite a while. it had been designated for the

smithsonian institution as one of the historic aircraft that had fought and won world war ii. and we ultimately moved it to our paul garber center and began restoration of it there and then moved it here to the center when we opened this building. when people think about the end of world war ii, they think about the enormous efforts that went into the creation of the atomic bombs, the uranium and plutonium bombs, and it was an enormous effort, you know, with facilities in new mexico, in the state of washington, in the state of tennessee. thousands of people involved. but in fact, what they seldom considered is the fact that in addition to building the bombs, you had to have an airplane that could deliver it. and the creation of the b-29 was a project actually bigger than the creation of the atomic bomb.

the b-29 had begun as plans for a very long-range bomber, and ultimately, boeing got the contract to build it. boeing had built the b-17, and so they came up with the notion of the b-29. it was really technologically an advanced airplane. it was the first military bomber to be pressurized so that the crew in the cockpit and in the cabin behind the cockpit and in the tailgunner's position -- they were in a shirtsleeve environment. it was a pressurized airplane. it had a special electronic fire control system. not on the enola gay which did not have the defensive armament that normal b-29's had. on a normal b-29, one crew member sitting in a blister in

the back of the airplane could control guns all over the airplane with a special electronic system that general electric had developed for the airplane. so it was an extraordinarily advanced aircraft to deliver that historic weapon. "q and a," bennis on the war on terrorism. >> who are their origins, what do they believe, why are they so i went? all of those questions are important. important because we can do something about it is what is the u.s. policy regarding isis? working? it can we go to war against terrorism?

are we doing the war wrong or is it wrong to say the should be a war against terrorism at all? those of the questions it will be the most useful. at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's "q&a." monday on "the communicators." ed him and-fi push he heard about silicon valley and dreamed about coming to america and that is what defines to do and is 17 he did that. -- 17 he did that. >> ashley on elon musk. >> he is seen as a steve jokes for your. -- steve jobs figure. he has this attention to detail and coaches workers hard. i lean more on this