But mounting controversy led officials to scale back the exhibit, now due to open next month with just the bomber and almost no commentary.Īt the center of the debate was the charge by veterans that Smithsonian curators had been overly influenced by “revisionist” scholarship, challenging commonly held explanations of why the bomb was dropped. Historical scholarship took a beating in the recent furor over the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibit on the Enola Gay.Īlong with the B-29 that carried the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, the museum had planned to feature a text exploring questions about the end of World War II.