Most of the initial protesting, however, was done outside the museum and consisted of distributing leaflets, displaying banners, and other actions of an orderly nature. The wings and the rest of the body would not fit into the museum gallery. Stretching from floor to ceiling on the opposite wall is one of the propellers, seventeen feet from tip to tip and a reminder of how large a B-29 was. The vertical stabilizer of the Enola Gay is displayed separately from the fuselage, as are two of the engines. General Tibbets and other members of the crew tell their own story in a video presentation.
Visitors can look inside the aircraft through two transparent panels.
Expectation that the artifacts might be targets for vandalism turned out to be well founded. Before the exhibition opened, a protester charged the gallery where the Enola Gay is housed and flung red paint on the carpeting. Three persons were arrested July 2 after they threw human blood and ashes on the fuselage of the aircraft. The museum's original exhibit plans flared into public controversy in the spring of 1994 when the Air Force Association and Air Force Magazine published a detailed description of the plan and circulated a detailed content analysis of graphic and text elements in the script. Over the next year, scrutiny by Congress, the news media, and veterans' groups became intense.