And focused leadership, you can resolve these problems, but it takes a lot of effort. Sunday night on cspans q a. Each week, american artifact takes you to museums and historic places. Mr. Crouch hi, my name is tom crouch. I am the senior curator of aeronautics at the national air and space museum. We are here this morning at the national air and space museum. This is the place where our museum keeps all of its largest objects and some pretty dine spectacular things when you come right down to it. You are looking here at the 29 in nola gay named after the pilots mother the b29 enola gaye, named after the pilots mother. He dropped the worlds first atomic bomb on an enemy target. Again, he named the airplane after his mother. It is certainly the most emotionally laden artifact, i think its safe to say in the entire collection of the national air and space museum. However you come down on the issues that it represents, atomic warfare and that kind of thing, its sort of is an icon that wraps all of those issues up in itself, so people do have interesting reactions to this airplane on all kinds of sides of the issue. It is a the 29 that was built not by the boeing company, which designed the b29. It was built at the margin plant near omaha, nebraska. They took out a spring of the 29s on that plant and designated them as silverplate airplanes. The silverplate airplanes were the ones that were going to be slightly modified to carry nuclear weapons. They removed all of the armament from them and made some other modifications. They had to change the bombay a bit to be able to fit either the uranium bomb or the plutonium bomb. So this is one of the silverplate b29s. The b29 boxcar, which dropped the bomb on now to sake three days after the hiroshima bomb has also been preserved. Its at the u. S. Air force museum in dayton, ohio. Again, as i said, paul tickets was the pilot of the airplane and he was the guy who had actually created the 509th composite group that was created specifically to deliver atomic weapons on designated targets and he picked a lot of the guys who work in the unit, did the training, and was just the absolute head of the 509, so he decided to fly that First Mission himself. The airplane survived because the air force specifically saved it. When it came back from the pacific, it was in Operational Air force hands for a little while, and then it was shipped out to the desert for a while to be specifically preserved. Ultimately, it was delivered to an air force base here in washington where it remained for quite a while. It had been designated for the Smithsonian Institution is one of the Historic Aircraft that had fought and won world war ii. We ultimately moved it to our polgar percent or and began restoration of it there and then moved it here when we opened this building. When people think about the end of world war ii, they think about the in normas efforts that went into the creation of the atomic arms, the uranium and plutonium bombs and it was an enormous effort, you know, with facilities in new mexico in the state of washington, in the state of tennessee. Thousands of people involved, but in fact, what they seldom considered is the fact that in addition to building the bombs you had to have an airplane that could deliver it. The creation of the b29 was a project actually bigger than the creation of the atomic bomb. The b29 had begun as plans for a very longrange bomber, and ultimately boeing got the contract to build it. Boeing had built the b17, so they came up with the notion of the b29. It was really technologically and advanced airplane. It was the First Military bomber to be pressurized so that the crew in the cockpit and in the cabin behind the cockpit and in the tailgunners position they were in a short sleeve environment. It was a pressurized airplane. It had an electronic fire control system. Not on the enola gay which did not have the defensive armament that normal b29s had. One crew member could control guns all over the airplane with a special Electronic System that General Electric had developed for the airplane. It was an extraordinarily advanced aircraft to deliver that historic weapon. Theodore roosevelt becomes president after the assassination of william mckinley, and to accommodate her family, first Lady Edith Roosevelt renovates the entire second floor of the mansion, thus he creation of a west wing to house staff offices. By adding a social secretary to the payroll, she creates the office of the first lady and changes the name from executive mansion to the white house. Edith roosevelt, this sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans original theories series, first ladies influence and image. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3. This month, cspan radio takes you to the movies. Here the Supreme Court oral argument from four cases that played a part of popular movies from this summer woman a gold, to the freespeech case from the 1990 six movie the people versus larry flynt, the watergate case from all the president s men, and the loving story about the landmark civil rights case invalidating laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Saturdays in august at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan radio