Museum of War

The Udvar-Hazy Center, with its emphasis on military, as opposed to commercial aircraft, has always seemed to me like a museum of war. It's lack of introspection of what war really means comes through in its enshrinement of the Enola Gay, spawning glib references to the plane that dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima like the following from Southwest Airlines' April 2009 magazine.

"Udvar-Hazy Center

See history take flight in Virginia.

When the world’s most famous planes retire, they don’t always wind up at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Sometimes they land in Virginia at the lesser-known annex of the Museum, the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Located five minutes from Dulles International Airport, the 530,000-square-foot Center contains hundreds of record-setting jets, bombers, and passenger planes. World War II buffs won’t want to miss the Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. After that, rocket ahead to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the jet that blasted from Los Angeles to D.C., in just over an hour.
Prefer a plane with a bit more legroom? See how the jet set commutes when you get a closer look at the Concorde, the first supersonic passenger aircraft to cross the Atlantic"....(complete story here ).

For a thoughtful discussion of the Enola Gay read Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's article in the LA Times "The Myths of Hiroshima."