"Aviation buffs will go to a cornfield to look at an aircraft," says retired Maj. Gen. Charles D. Metcalf, director of the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, near Dayton, Ohio. "But more than the hardware, the story of the Air Force is what people come to see. Most of our visitors know little about the aircraft we have on display. They are more interested in the history of the people who flew the aircraft and the wars they fought."
The museum, which dates back to 1923, is the oldest military aircraft museum in the world. It is also the largest military aviation museum, growing from 8,100 square feet in 1927 in the corner of a hangar at McCook Field near Dayton to seventeen acres of indoor exhibit space today. About 40,000 visitors passed through the doors of what was then known as the Air Force Museum when it first opened to the public in 1955. Today, a ninety-six person staff and more than 500 volunteers keep the museum running for the more than 1.2 million people who come through the doors annually.
The museum's collection has grown exponentially as well. What began as a couple of World War I biplanes now includes more than 300 aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft of all types on display, many of which are one of a kind. The collection also claims more than 50,000 artifacts that range from patches, uniforms, and flight suits to an 11,000-pound runway roller, a parachute for a dog, and a pair of pajamas.
"We can usually get the aircraft we need. It's the personal mementos we really want," says senior curator Terry Aitken. "We are interested in the total Air Force experience. We care as much about a snapshot of an airman working at an isolated radar site as we do about a casing for a nuclear weapon."
Bits Of History
"We are still getting World War II-era artifacts," continues Aitken. "Unfortunately, most are not coming from veterans. They are coming from the family of a veteran who passes away. More and more artifacts from the Vietnam era are being donated. People donate items because, in some small way, they want their personal stories told."
Advancing technology can make telling those stories more difficult. "People gave us black and white photographs and pieces of paper in the old days," Aitken continues. "But now, what can we do with a big floppy disk? We have no equipment to read it. While we need the artifacts and data, we also need a way to capture it. During Vietnam, people made audio cassettes instead of writing letters. But magnetic media have a limited lifetime. We also have a similar problem with 8-mm film, which gets brittle and discolored with age. A lot of history from Vietnam was recorded on Super 8 film."
Sometimes the donations are serendipitous. During World War II, Chinese workers used solid stone rollers to construct airstrips for American aircraft. Hundreds of workers pulled one roller weighing nearly 11,000 pounds over rocks to make compressed gravel runways. These airstrips were often 8,500 feet long. "We had a display with a photo of one of these rollers being pulled in Kunming," says Aitken. "Some Chinese visitors came in one day, and they were astounded that we cared about their stone roller. They said they still had one and asked if we would like to have it. Obviously we did want it, and it was shipped here using opportune airlift on a C-5."
Within the last ten years, Vietnam War veteran communities have begun to organize themselves. "The Vietnam vets, a very diverse community, are starting to coalesce," says Aitken. "For instance, we worked with the forward air controllers' association and asked what their members would like to see included in their exhibit. Thank goodness for the Internet. Veterans are much more inclined to contact us, and they can reach us easily. We get previously untapped sources coming to us."
Other military operations such as Grenada, Mogadishu, or Kosovo are short lived and don't involve many military personnel. For example, only a small handful of Air Force personnel served in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada in 1983. "An AK-47 rifle picked up off the ground in Grenada isn't what we are looking for," says Aitken. "We want memorabilia generated specifically for that operation, such as challenge coins. Those artifacts are a lot harder to find. But wouldn't it be neat to display candid photos of Grenada instead of just official Air Force photos?"
The Dayton museum was recently recognized in Museum News, the journal of the American Association of Museums, as one of sixty international museums that "change the way one sees the world for a time." In fact, the museum is one of only two aviation museums — the other being the National Air and Space Museum — to be included. The list includes such heavyweights as the Louvre, the Getty, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of course, one of the main reasons the National Museum of the United States Air Force appears on this list is its wealth of aircraft.
Bigger Bits Of History
Acquiring current aircraft for the collection is pretty easy. "We get first choice of any aircraft in the Air Force we want," says Aitken. "It is often a case where we choose a specific aircraft because of one specific mission. That kind of information gets documented by the Air Force. All things being equal, we prefer an aircraft with a story.
"The C-141 is a good example," continues Aitken. "Every one of them has done a lot in its career. The aircraft known as Hanoi Taxi has done what every other aircraft has done, except it was the first aircraft into North Vietnam to repatriate the POWs. For sure, that aircraft is coming here. We have a hold on one KC-135 that brought six damaged fighters home after a mission in Vietnam. But we also have backups identified, in case the primary aircraft we want is involved in an accident before it is retired. Every aircraft we accept has a dossier, and it has to help tell the Air Force story."
But not every aircraft is flown in, cleaned, and immediately displayed. Most of them require years of restoration. "We have at least a twenty-five year backlog of aircraft that need to be restored," says Myrl Morris, the former chief of the museum's restoration division.
A complete restoration is much like building a new aircraft. "We plan the restoration and how thorough it has to be. We find out what parts we have, what parts we don't have, what parts we need to make from scratch," says Morris. "We take photographs before and after the restoration. That way, anyone wondering why we made a certain repair — even fifty years from now — will know why. We document everything."
The toolboxes in the two restoration hangars would be appropriate for a flightline of 1918, 1930, or 2005. "We could be working with composites on the YF-22 today and the fabric for a World War I SPAD fighter tomorrow," Morris notes. "The restoration crew has to be flexible."
The ultimate goal of the restoration is accuracy. "We try to get the aircraft as close to airworthy as possible," notes Morris. That mindset extends even to the aircraft that are on display. "We recently found the correct instrument panel for the AT-11 bombardier trainer from World War II. We pulled out the inaccurate panel we had in there and installed the new one. Most people will never know the difference. But we do."
The declining skill pool is a looming issue. Even though the average age of the restoration craftsmen is fifty-four, all are close to retirement. "We have to have some way to preserve their skills or no one will know how to fabricate wood parts or how to dope cloth ten years from now," says Morris, who himself recently retired.
Telling A Story
Even after restoration, the museum's air force, which is larger than that of many countries, has to be maintained. For example, the fabric covering on the World War I-era aircraft, even when displayed under the best of conditions, will deteriorate over time. "Those aircraft will eventually have to be taken down, rewired, and re-covered," explains Morris. "We recently repaired and replaced the fabric on our SPAD, so it is good for another fifty years."
Like the SPAD, most of the other aircraft on display look like they just rolled off the assembly line. Others don't. Those aircraft are displayed in what the museum calls habitats. The Curtiss P-36, the first aircraft seen in the World War II gallery, features a pilot mannequin in pajamas scrambling to get in the cockpit. That was exactly how Lt. Phil Rasmussen went to war over Hawaii on 7 December 1941. The pajamas, in fact, are Rasmussen's.
"There are always visitors around the habitats. They draw people's attention," observes Metcalf. "They give visitors a feel for what was going on at one particular moment. At that point, the aircraft becomes more than just a piece of aluminum. It becomes an explanation of the history."
In the early 1960s, the museum was housed in a converted warehouse. Partly as a function of getting around and between the support posts holding up the roof of the building, the museum installed a mazelike floor plan that presented the story of military aviation in chronological order. When the museum moved to its current location and its new split hangar structure in 1971, the existing chronology was maintained but expanded to include Vietnam. The building was completely filled as soon as it opened, and many of the larger aircraft were kept outside.
In 1988, the Air Force Museum Foundation, the facility's nonprofit fundraising organization, and the federal government funded the Modern Flight Gallery, which parallels and is similar in appearance to the 1971 structure. More of the aircraft could be brought inside and protected, but the chronology was lost. The 1960s-era SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, for example, was displayed next to the mid 1970s-era experimental X-24, which was displayed near a Korean War F-94 interceptor.
Getting The Chronology Right
The opening of the $22.7 million, 200,000-square-foot Eugene W. Kettering Building in 2003 "allowed us to get the chronology correct," notes Metcalf. Nearly every aircraft in the collection was moved. Some were moved a few feet, while others were moved from building to building.
"When I announced we were going to move the B-36 to the Cold War Gallery, I could see the restoration staff mentally calculating if they could retire. They didn't want to move it," Metcalf recalls. Moving the Consolidated B-36 intercontinental bomber, with its 230-foot wingspan, required taking down the end wall of the 1971 building.
"Taking down the exhibit walls to move the aircraft forced us to examine our displays," Metcalf notes. "Some of the exhibits dated back to the opening of the building. We recognized that some of our caretaking practices weren't as good then as they are now. We have much better technology and can take much better care of our artifacts now."
Visitors enter the Early Years Gallery, which traces the history of military aviation from the Wright 1909 Military Flyer and Standard J-1 (the earliest heritage Lockheed Martin aircraft on display), through World War I, through the post-war years, and the run-up to World War II. A significant gap in the chronology was filled in 2002. In 1921, Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell proved the concept of strategic bombing by sinking the captured German battleship Ostfriesland using Martin MB-2 bombers. Because actual MB-2s simply don't exist, the museum built an exact full-scale replica.
The Air Power Gallery, which displayed some of the World War II, Korea, and Vietnam aircraft and the spacecraft when the building opened, is now completely filled with World War II aircraft and artifacts, such as a train car used to haul prisoners of war to German stalags and an engine from the Lady Be Good, the Consolidated B-24 whose crew disappeared after overshooting their base in 1944. The wreckage was found in 1959.
The Modern Flight Gallery now contains the aircraft from the Korean and Vietnam wars. A large hallway connecting the Modern Flight Gallery with the Cold War Gallery houses an exhibit on the Berlin Airlift. Featured is a parachute made for a dog. Clarence Steber, a transport pilot during the airlift, fitted his dog, Vittles, to fly missions with him.
A unique visual greets visitors when they walk in the new gallery. The B-36, the first bomber of the Cold War, is nearly nose-to-nose with the static test article for the B-2 bomber, the last visible symbol of that forty-year superpower struggle. The latest addition to the museum's floor plan is the Missile and Space Gallery that will eventually feature ten of the Air Force intercontinental ballistic missiles and space boosters displayed vertically.
In addition to showing the history of the Air Force in the correct timeline, the revised layout also shows the history of the aerospace industry in America. "We take great pains to make sure the names of the corporations that built the aircraft are recognized," says Metcalf. "All of the aircraft companies come out of a pretty small gene pool." More than fifty-five aircraft, weapons, or missiles built by Lockheed Martin heritage companies are on display.
The museum's name — formally changed in October 2004 in recognition of its nationwide mission — places it at a name level with such peers as the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola, Florida.
On The Horizon
"Some amazing history is out there," Metcalf notes. "The Hanoi Taxi, which will be retired next May, may be displayed outside. Or we may keep it with the 445th Airlift Wing across base because the wing has a spare hangar. At some point, however, we'll also acquire a C-5. We have to find a place for both. They don't make small aircraft anymore."
The museum's Presidential aircraft collection is housed in a historic hangar on the controlled side of Wright-Patterson. Access is limited, and only about ten percent of museum visitors make the fifteen minute bus trip. "Many of our visitors have a great emotional attachment to the Presidential aircraft," notes Metcalf. "We need a building on this side for those aircraft."
Plans are already under way for a fourth exhibition building; about $8 million of the approximately $14 million needed to build the new building has already been raised. Part of the new building will house the Presidential aircraft, and a portion will be dedicated to space, with room for future accessions. Construction of the new building is expected to be under way in 2007. "The fourth building will hold us for the foreseeable future," Metcalf says.
The current Presidential hangar will then be used for the restoration of the Consolidated XC-99, the cargo version of the B-36. Visitors to the hangar will be able to watch the restoration team at work.
"We are also looking to build an education center. A museum that doesn't educate hasn't paid its dues," says Metcalf. "We need to start with the youngsters and convince them that science and math are not detrimental to their health." Today, working out of cramped quarters, the museum sponsors nearly 1,300 educational programs. It reaches more than 90,000 students and teachers, including school groups from as far away as Pennsylvania.
Despite its success, despite its size, despite its longevity, actually finding the lone driveway of National Museum of the United States Air Force is still a challenge. "We are working on getting a gate directly off I-675 for easier access," Metcalf observes. "Some people still haven't figured out how to get here. The Ohio Department of Transportation initially resisted installing brown tourist attraction signs, but it became a moot point the day of our meeting — they got lost and couldn't find the building."
Jeff Rhodes is the associate editor of Code One.
