Enola Gay & The Aircraft of WWII | History Traveler Episode 26

in episodes 21 and 22 we went to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC there we saw the original Wright Flyer the spirit of st. Louis that was flown by Charles Lindbergh and Neil Armstrong's actual spacesuit but what a lot of people may not realize is that the Air and Space Museum is one museum in two different locations so in this episode we're going to the Steven F udvar-hazy center out by Dulles Airport where we're going to see some of the most iconic aircraft from World War two [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can't talk about the history of the United States without at some point talking about the role the aviation has played in the development and defense of our country which is why today I am at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum out by Dulles Airport I know for a fact that there are a ton of artifacts related to aviation in this museum we're not gonna be able to hit them all going to focus primarily on World War two Korea and Vietnam but should be interesting I know there's some cool stuff in here [Music] okay so right off the bat whenever you walk in got a p40 Kittyhawk this is a World War 2 plane that was used by Chennault Flying Tigers they flew in China against the Japanese there's another iconic plane from the Pacific this is an f4u Corsair it's kind of different because it has this inverted wing something kind of interesting tied to this plane Charles Lindbergh who is very much an anti-war activist before the war ended up flying this plane in bombing and strafing missions against the Japanese it's kind of cool typically World War 2 you focus on the combat aircraft but this is a trainer this is a PT 22 recruit so this is what they would have used to get their pilots trained up so here's a Japanese fighter from World War two called the nakajima Gekko was a three seater that later got converted to a two-seater and a lot of these were used by kamikaze pilots I love these old leather flight jackets so cool so the crew would get somebody to paint the backs of them kind of personalize them these were actually government property though they weren't supposed to keep these but many of them did and now this is this is really cool this is the uniform of general james Doolittle who led the famous Doolittle Raid after the attack on Pearl Harbor they launched a bunch of b-25s off of aircraft carriers to attack Tokyo and then later got transferred to Europe and was command of the mighty 8th Air Force very cool that they have his uniform here here's kind of an interesting one this is a p-61 black widow this was the first aircraft that was designed primarily for night missions I didn't really go into use until after d-day so you don't really hear a lot about them but kind of an interesting aircraft I've got a little bit of British representation here this is a Hawker hurricane so these were used heavily by the British in World War two helped win the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 I think this was the first British fighter to go over 300 miles an hour pretty iconic British fighter plane now here is one of the iconic fighter planes from World War two a p-38 lightning this was used in every theater of the war I always thought it had kind of a funny design I'll try and get around to get like an aerial view of it too you can so you can see the tail but these planes right here down to more Japanese aircraft than any other plane and the war pretty cool so here's a p-47 Thunderbolt so there were more of these that were produced during World War two than any other fighter planes so very very popular aircraft of the Second World War so this little thing here is another Japanese craft and you can see it has like little bitty wings and everything like that so it can't really fly as far as taking off this was called an bull which means cherry blossom they would attach these to Japanese Navy bombers and then drop them off the bottom and then they would be used as kamikaze pilots pretty crazy all right so here's a pretty iconic German aircraft from World War two this is the Koko Wulf 190 these were the primary planes that got deployed against the b-17 bombers whenever they were launching raids over Nazi held Europe yes yes this is good advice do not carry children on your shoulders especially when you are way up here okay so of all of the aircraft in world war two there's probably none that are more famous more well-known or more iconic than the Enola Gay this is the plane that on August 6th 1945 took off under the piloting of Paul Tibbets and flew over Hiroshima and dropped little boy the very first atomic bomb used in warfare one of two so the other one was boxcar that flew over Nagasaki that plane is on display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio but this one's the first I think it's August the 4th right now so I'm here almost exactly 74 years from the day that this thing flew over Japan and started the beginning of the very end of World War two so cool to see this plane this is a b-29 probably not quite as sturdy as the the b-17s a lot of pilots and crews that flew on this aircraft really didn't like it as much as the b-17 but it got the job done [Music] okay so that was some of the world war ii aircraft here at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum out by Dulles man is as a fan of World War two history it's cool to see all those planes in person I'm going to go ahead and move now start looking at some of the planes of the Cold War that were used in Korea and Vietnam that will be in a different video listen I don't even know what the heck this little thing is but all I know is that there's not enough money in this world to get me in it [Music]

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 43,755

Rating: 4.9641404 out of 5

Keywords: history, history traveler, travel, history underground, wwii, enola gay, atomic bomb, b-29, paul tibbits, fighter planes, kamikaze, german, war, smithsonian, air and space museum, dulles airport, jd huitt, hiroshima

Id: l66lsE2d-6M

Length: 8min 56sec (536 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019