Atomic battle at museum.

The Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the world's first atomic bomb in warfare, is still a controversial symbol, 58 years later. The display of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian's new branch of the National Air and Space Museum outside Washington, D.C., notes that the plane dropped the bomb, calls it "the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II," and includes statistics about it. But a petition from 100 scholars and writers argued that the exhibit, which opened amid protests in December, should be used to "stimulate a national discussion of U.S. nuclear history and current policy." The Enola Gay, a B-29, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing up to 100,000 Japanese and hastening the end of World War II. The petitioners say the exhibit avoids the human cost of dropping the bomb. "You wouldn't display a slave ship solely as a model of technological advancement," says David Nasaw, a historian at City University of New York. The museum rejected the petition, saying the display is similar to its other aircraft displays. Including casualty figures, it said, wouldn't be practical.