Meet the Enola Gay. She was named for Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the man who famously piloted this Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bomber during World War II.

On August 6, 1945, Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. and his 11- man crew dropped a highly enriched uranium, explosion-type, “gun-fired,” atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan from this plane. This was the first use of a nuclear weapon in war.

Three days later, another plane dropped an atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan.

On August 14, 1945, the Japanese accepted Allied terms for unconditional surrender.

The war was finally over.

I have heard this story so many times in history class, in documentaries, books, and thoughts from my dad the history buff. But I never dreamed I would get to see the Enola Gay in person.

It is on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, a part of the National Air and Space Museum outside Washington DC. When my Pittsburgh pal and I adventured over to DC a few years ago, we stopped here on our way into the city. It was a good place to see some neat things and stretch our legs after a day in the car.

And, boy, do they have some neat things to see including the Space Shuttle Discovery and some truly unusual aircraft I had never seen before. Yet, nothing else reduced me to a pile of fan girl excitement followed by absolute grief over the power and magnitude of this piece of machinery.

It has been restored so it looks pretty good for its age. And it’s bigger than I imagined so that was kind of cool. You can get a pretty close view of this plane and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would say if airplanes could talk.

Smithsonian museums are world class so never pass up the opportunity to look around one. You never know what famous relic or little told story you might find!