Magnificent flying machines

Scripps Howard News Service: The nation's capital has a magnificent addition to its grand collection of museums -- the annex to the National Air and Space Museum.
"Annex" is perhaps the wrong word to use for a huge structure whose column-free interior is 1,000 feet long and 10 stories high, large enough to house two or three versions of its parent museum, reputedly the world's most popular.
The Udvar-Hazy Center, to use its proper name, opened this week, and it will ultimately hold more than 200 aircraft, including historic craft that were too large to be displayed at the National Mall location -- the Blackbird spy plane; the supersonic Concorde, which flew to the museum; the prototype space shuttle Enterprise; a prototype 707.
There are aircraft everywhere -- parked, hanging from the ceiling, hanging upside down from the ceiling, biplanes, monoplanes, stunt planes, flying wings, war birds, gliders and the humble Piper J-3 Cub. And then there are artifacts like Lindbergh's goggles, a NASA mobile quarantine facility and plastic "dog doo" transmitters of the kind dropped along the Ho Chi Minh trail.
What makes men fly
The displays are testament to mankind's doggedness and ingenuity in going higher, farther and faster, and not always with peaceful or honorable intentions.
The Udvar-Hazy Center -- named after the largest single donor to the $311 million privately financed facility -- is adjacent to Dulles International Airport outside Washington.
This being Washington, the center's opening wasn't entirely free of politics. The presence of the Enola Gay attracted protesters, one of whom was arrested for trying to vandalize the plane. The Enola Gay is the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The plaque notes this fact but little more other than that the B-29 was "the most sophisticated propeller-driven bomber of World War II."
Some of the protesters object to displaying the Enola Gay at all on the grounds that it connotes approval of nuclear war; others say the museum should describe the great carnage the bomb caused.
That's the great thing about this display. You can go and make up your own mind.