One day before the August 6 anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the aviation museum located at the Szolnok Air Force Base in Central Hungary opened a temporary display of a German and a British World War II fighter facing one another, national news agency MTI reports.
The two planes are a Messerschmitt Bf 109 from the Szolnok museum’s own collection, while the other, the British Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk.XVIE is on loan from the Polish Aviation Museum.
The display of the two iconic warplanes was made possible with the help of the Polish Embassy to Hungary, main sponsor of the temporary exhibition which will be available until September 13.
On August 6, 1945 at 08:15 hours the modified Boeing b-29 Superfortress bomber of the U.S. AIr Force named Enola Gay and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets released the “Little Boy” atomic bomb over Hiroshima, killing 20,000 soldiers and between 70,000 and 126,000 civilians. Combined with the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, the two bombings prompted the surrender of Japan to the Allies on August 15, officially ending World War II.
Title image: A Messerschmitt Bf 109 (R) and a Supermarine Spitfire LF Mk.XVIE (L) fighter plane nose-to-nose at the Szolnok Aviation Museum on August 5, 2020. (MTI/Péter Komka)
