WASHINGTON: The plane that dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, 58 years ago, will be on display next week at America’s National Air and Space Museum.

Although the exhibition opens to the public on Dec 15, a select group of people, including journalists, has been allowed to preview the museum’s new display centre.

The new, $311 million museum, named after its major donor Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, has been built near the Washington Dulles Airport, and is expected to be a major tourist attraction.

Over 200 aircraft and 135 spacecraft will be on display, including the Space Shuttle “Enterprise”; an SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft; the Dash 80 prototype of the Boeing 707; the B-17 Flying Fortress named “Swoose”; an F-4 Phantom fighter and the de Havilland Chipmunk aerobatic plane, to name a few.

But the most controversial display item at the Smithsonian Institution’s new museum is the B-29 Superfortress, also known as Enola Gay.

This generic name, however, does not say much about the plane except that Enola Gay was the name of the mother of its pilot, Paul W. Tibbets Jr.

This rather innocent sounding name, however, has a history. It is the only plane in the Smithsonian collection used to kill more than 100,000 people by dropping a single bomb.

The nuclear bomb was dropped on Aug 6, 1945 and by the end of the year, the radiation had already killed more than 140,000 people. They were citizens including students, soldiers and Koreans who worked in factories within the city. The total number of people who died in the bombing is estimated to be 200,000.

But those who visit the museum once it is open to the public will not learn all this. The official introduction prefers to focus on the plane’s technical abilities. “Boeing’s B-29 Superfortress was the most sophisticated, propeller-driven, bomber to fly during the World War II, and the first bomber to house its crew in pressurized compartments,” says the official introduction.

It does mention that “on Aug 6, 1945, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets Jr, in command of the Superfortress, Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, Major Charles W. Sweeney piloted another B-29 named “Bockscar” and dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.” “On August 14, 1945, the Japanese accepted Allied terms for unconditional surrender,” says the official introduction while talking about the consequences of the two attacks. It does not talk about the terrible destructions unleashed by the world’s first, and so far the only, nuclear attacks. “You have to talk about human victims,” says Kevin Martin, executive director of Peace Action, one of several groups pushing the museum to include more information about the destruction caused by the bomb. “Personally, I would show pictures of the devastation,” Mr Martin said.

The critics have formed a new group called the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy, led by a History professor at the American University, Peter Kuznick.

The group says that the exhibit portrays the bomber only as a “magnificent technological achievement,” glorifying the bombing while ignoring the casualties and destruction it caused.

In October, Mr Kuznick circulated a petition among scholars, veterans, clergy, activists, students and others, and sent it to museum’s director, retired Gen John R. Dailey. They hoped the exhibit would be changed to include historical context.