[Ol' Badger]

That the Protesters have already thrown paint on the Enola Gay at the New Smithsonian. What PSO's.

[MJRW]

What the heck is the Enjoy Gay? I've heard of the Enola Gay, and Enjoy Coke.

[El Tejon]

Badger, the aircraft that dropped the first A-bomb? That's the Enola Gay, IIRC.:confused:

[Ian]

Throwing paint? Are they confusing it with a fur airplane or something? :confused:

[4v50 Gary]

I know it's a Federal crime to steal from any museum, but I wonder what the penalty is for defacing an exhibit? Me, I'd like to bring back some Civil War punishments like buck 'n gag, barrel shirts, etc. Public humiliation goes a long way towards humbling a person.

BTW, the Enola Gay saved lives. Ask any PoW who was in Japan. They were threatened to be killed when the Allies landed on the mainland. The bomb changed all that.

[Ol' Badger]

Ok ok ok. I can't spell. But I got my picture taken next to it when they were putting it together.

[Langenator]

Some think dropping the bombs was a bad thing. Any WWII GI will tell you different, and there are probably a pretty good number of Japanese who will admit that the bombs saved lives on both sides in the long run.

To put it in perspective: The DoD is still using up the supply of Purple Hearts ordered in anticipation of the invasion of Japan.

And, for you trivia buffs out there: What was the name of the B-29 that dropped the second A-bomb?

[Ol' Badger]

BOXCAR!

Doing the I was right dance!

[glocksman]

Wrong.

It's Bock's Car or Bockscar. :p

[Justin]

Link to news story:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1459989,00.html

Dropping an atom bomb on Japan was indeed a tragedy, but under the circumstances the best choice at the time.

[Ol' Badger]

<Slowly stops the I was right dance> Damn!:(

[TallPine]

"Enjoy Gay" and "Boxcar"


Right up there with "the Nino, the Pinto, and the Santa Fe"

:D

[Harry Tuttle]

little boy and fat man

which plane had which bomb?

http://www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

Enola Gay dropped Little Boy.

The B-29 that dropped Fat Man was undesignated at the time it dropped it. After the mission, it was christened Bock's Car after the pilot, Fred Bock (who didn't fly the mission.)

- pdmoderator

[Ol' Badger]

Ok Ok TallPine. So I cant sepll worth a damn!


:D

[greyhound]

If we tried to name bombs "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" these days the ACLU would be suing the DOD so fast Donald Rumsfeld's head would spin.

Seriously, though, doesn't todays military frown on naming bombs? I recall some sort of ridiculous Ramadan incident in Afghanistan.

[Dave Markowitz]

Here she is:

http://www.military.cz/usa/air/war/bomber/b29/b29boxcr.jpg

http://www.military.cz/usa/air/war/bomber/b29/b29boxcr.jpg

She is at the USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in OH, and is very impressive in person.

The idiots who threw paint on the Enola Gay should be tarred and feathered. :cuss:

[dustind]

I saw the plane and met the pilot two summers ago at the WWII show in Minneapolis. He was a nice guy, and they had tons of neat toys there. I got to sit in a cobra helicopter.

[spacemanspiff]

send these 'activists' back to japan and burn their visas.

sidenote to japan attacks during WWII: i found a book written about life in two alaskan villages off of kodiak, it spoke of japan bombing one of the harbors (dutch harbor? i forget). across the bay from where my mother and her mother was raised (a small village called Ouzinkie) the Navy set up a camp, not sure if they named that bay at that time, now its called Soldiers Bay.
A couple hundred Navy Seabees were stationed there as a defensive post, the train of thought being that if the Japanese took control of that passage, they would have direct access to the city of Kodiak. the book describes the Navy camp as having 40 mm anti aircraft guns. there was also a plane on site, which would tow behind it a target for them to practice shooting on.

i just learned that my grandfather was sent to Adak during WWII. my mother didnt know anything about what he did there, i'll ask my grandmother next time i visit her.

[benewton]

Thanks Dave, I was going to have to dig out my photo disk to post.

Are you sure you didn't steal my shot?

If any of you are bird freaks, and you have the chance, do hit the AF museum, as it has everything from WWI, and before, up to present day.
After the 16th, they'll have a structural test B2 on display, too.

Simply an impossible to miss deal, for "free".

As for the protestors and their paint, one wonders how many would have been born had Japan been invaded...

[HankB]

Some think dropping the bombs was a bad thing. Yeah, I had a history teacher in college back in the mid-70's who thought that - he said we should've had a "demonstration" by dropping one on some Pacific island while the Japs observed.

When I started laughing, he asked, in an oh-so-serious voice, what I thought was so funny.

"Professor" I said, "I have to admire your ability to say something so ridiculous with a straight face." I continued "We DID have a demonstration - it's known as Hiroshima. AND IT WASN'T ENOUGH! It took a declaration of war by Stalin and a SECOND bomb to get the Japs to surrender. You can't seriously think roasting a few coconuts on some island would have caused a surrender, when obliterating an entire Jap CITY didn't, can you? What sort of revisionist nonsense have you been reading?"

His only response - "I find your use of the term "Japs" derogatory and offensive. Please don't use it in my class again."

After the laughter in the class died down, red-faced, he moved on.

As for the protestors who threw paint on the Enola Gay . . . if I were king, I'd make them clean it off themselves. With their tongues.

[MicroBalrog]

I think those people are sick. While I don't believe nuclear weapons are a good idea, back then nobody knew about the long-range effects that Saharov discovered. And it did save untold thousands of lives in the long run.

[Sportcat]

time to ban paint. :rolleyes: :D

[MLH]

That showed that the Japenese had a whole lot of JET aircraft hidden in the mountains that they were going to use to defend the homeland with. Much faster that anything we had at the time. There would have be thousands more G.I.'s killed trying to invade the mainland of Japan. The bomb was the best thing to end the war with.

[ravinraven]

......who ended WWII from Bock's Car.

I was in SAC Hq in March 1962 on a field trip with my Raven class. There a Lt. Col. briefed us on SAC operations, etc. He shook our hands as we departed the room. At the club that night, one of our instructors said: "Do you realize who that man was?"

"Huh?"

"Kermit Behan."

"Huh, huh!"

"He was the bombardier on the B-29 that dropped the second A-bomb."

Actually, I think we should celebrate that last bomber hoping that it did in fact drop the LAST nuke that ever will be dropped. I visited the USAF Museum in 1976 and saw Bock's Car. A thing of beauty.

I love to blab away to the college liberals up here---back when they used to invite me to parties---about the three famous hands I shook. I end with Kermit Behan and they say "Who?" They absolutely do not like it that perhaps a half million lives were saved by those blivents.

My boss at a two-year college up here used to say that a nuclear reaction saved his life. He was in a boat getting ready to head for the Japan Invasion when the war ended. He wasn't loved for saying that.

Back on the 30th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb, we had a bunch of fools carrying signs that protested Hiroshima. I put a letter in the paper that said: "If there'd been no Pearl Harbor, there would have been no Hiroshima. If you try for our blood and fail, don't beg for our tears."

That didn't go over too well either.

The low-life government school indoctrinators "teach" that liberty and the protection of it is somehow bad. Better to let any b*st*rd walk over us than to maintain liberty. Guns and the 2A are two highly visible pro-liberty items. Therefore the feverish work against them by the loony left.

Watching the fools work and hearing their whining, bleating speeches spawned by their putrid minds makes me realize that tyranny is the natural form of government. If you have no better idea or no way to understand a better idea, you do what's natural. In the natural gov't case, it's "better" to enjoy the bliss of a police state than the chaos of liberty.

But, then, the bliss-ninnys are a part of the chaos of liberty so we probably should appreciate them. At least they are a great example of how not to be.

ravinrantinraven

[TallPine]

The bomb was the best thing to end the war with.
Yeah, it's just too bad that we didn't have the bomb and the means to deliver it about four years earlier - like on Dec. 8, 1941.


Here's another Robert Heinlein quote that I ran across:
The price of freedom is the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, at any time, and with utter recklessness.

[Partisan Ranger]

If the A bomb wasn't necessary, then I guess the firebombing by the limeys, krauts, japs, and us wasn't necessary either. That killed more than both A bombs combined.

Look, it was a war. Brought upon US. They started it. We finished it. If they don't like how the US finishes wars (obliterating the enemy), don't start one with us.

[NukemJim]

back then nobody knew about the long-range effects that Saharov discovered.

Actually the danger of long life radionuclides ( Fallout ) was denonstrated back in the 1920's and before ( 1st US death caused by radiation was about 1906, an assistant of Thomas Edison ) and was definelty known in the 1920's JAMA had an editorial against the use of radioactive Thoratrast as an IV Contrast agent in about 1928.

NukemJim

PS my cybername refers to the fact that I work in Nuclear Medicine and has nothing to do with bombs