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Up for sale is an original estate find 1995 photo-stock color wartime poster of the "Enola Gay." Print on the poster reads: "The National Air and Space Museum Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 1995." The poster was created to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first Atomic Bomb dropped at Hiroshima ending WWII. Poster measures 30" x 24" and is nicely double matted in a black aluminum frame. This poster contains three (3) original signatures of Enola Gay crewman: Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr. (Pilot), signature at middle (Feb. 23, 1915 - Nov. 1, 2007), Major Thomas Ferebee (Bombardier), signature at right (Nov. 9, 1918 - March 16, 2000), and Captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk (Navigator) at left (Feb. 27, 1921 - July 28, 2014), signed boldly in black ink on light tarmac below plane.
Last four photos, two photos of crew, 1995 display of Enola Gay's cockpit nose section, and 2003 restored plane are shown for perspective only and are not included in this sale.
Framed poster measures 29-7/8" x 32-3/4".
Poster can be shipped FRAMED in the LOWER 48 STATES OF USA ONLY (HAWAII OR ALASKA SHIPPING NOT AVAILABLE) for $35.00or rolled WITHOUT FRAME in USA for $15.00.
God Bless!!!
A brief history on the Enola Gay (Wikipedia):
The Enola Gay is a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. On 6 August 1945, during the final stages of World War II, it became the fist aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in warfare. The bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was targeted at the city of Hiroshima, Japan, and caused the destruction of three quarters of the city. Enola Gay participated in the second nuclear attack as the weather reconnaissance aircraft for the primary target of Kokura. Clouds and drifting smoke resulted in Nagasaki, a secondary target, being bombed instead.
After the war, the Enola Gay returned to the United States, where it was operated from Roswell Army Air Field, New Mexico. In May 1946, it was flown to Kwajalein for the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific, but was not chosen to make the test drop at Bikini Atoll. Later that year, it was transferred to the Smithsonian Institute and spent many years parked at air bases exposed to weather and souvenir hunters, before its 1961 disassembly and storage at a Smithsonian facility in Suitland, Maryland.
In the 1980s, veterans groups engaged in a call for the Smithsonian to put the aircraft on display, leading to an acrimonious debate about exhibiting the aircraft without a proper historical context. The cockpit and nose section of the aircraft were exhibited at the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) on the national Mall, for the bombing's 50th anniversary in 1995, amid controversy (See 2nd to last photo). Since 2003, the entire restored B-29 has been on display at NASM's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center (See last photo). The last survivor of its crew, Theodore Van Kirk, died on 28 July 2014 at the age of 93.
