There is no other way to put it. The Planes of Fame Air Museum overwhelmed me. Drowning in the aviation history it showcases, and the aviation provenance of the airport in Chino, California, where it presents it, I don’t know where to start this piece.
So let me start with the smell. Because many of the airplanes in the museum’s collection still fly, its hangars, airplane locker rooms, have the redolent fragrance of airplane sweat. It is a lingering bouquet of hot oil cooling, the sweet scent of hydraulic fluid playing against the acrid pepper of rubbed raw rubber after it meets the runway.
It is a good smell, one worth breathing deeply at every turn because many of the wingspan entryways were open. It’s much better than the traditional climate-controlled museum atmosphere of stale, recirculated HVAC air tinged with dust and the whiff of commercial floor wax. And on this August Tuesday morning, stopping on our Route 66 way to Santa Monica, my riding partner (who’s also a pilot) and I pretty much had the place to ourselves.
Most of the airplanes on display were parked, not presented in some curated full-scale diorama. Instead the maintenance was real. Where else would you see a rare razorback P-47 Thunderbolt with its engine bared and rectangular black plastic drip pans catching the effluent from nose to (almost) tail?
Speaking of cockpits, next to the flying P-38 Lightning in the 475th Fighter Group Hangar, is a P-38 cockpit, restored to it active duty specs. Mounted at floor level, its side windows are down and you can, if you’re tall enough, stick your head in it for a closer look. My friend has some experience with the human factors pilots deal with in today’s cockpits, and looking inside the Lightning, he just shook his head. And like me, he’d give anything to fly one. (Unlike me, he fit in the cockpit, so I guess I’d still be on the outside looking up.)
And then there are the rare airplanes, like the Northrop Flying Wing, which, indeed, regularly flies, and the world’s last flying Mitsubishi A6M5 Reisen (Zero) powered by its issued powerplant, a Nakajima Sakae 21, 14-cylinder 1,130-hp air-cooled radial engine. Like most of the airplanes in the Planes of Fame Collection, the Zero flies today because of the foresight of its founder Ed Maloney, who bought it in 1951 when the government sold it for scrap.
Maloney grew up in the Chino area and was a regular visitor to Cal-Aero Field, which is now the Chino airport. Established before World War II, it was home to Cal-Aero Academy, which had the Army Air Forces contract for primary and basic pilot training. The academy closed on October 16, 1944, after training 10,365 pilots.
Cal-Aero Field was one of 30 sales and storage depots for airplanes no longer needed after the war. Nearly 1,900 aircraft, including the B-17, B-24, B-25, B-26, P-38, P-40, P-47, P-51, another other makes and models, were sent to Cal-Aero. It is where William Wyler filmed the field of engineless B-17s for a scene in his Academy Award winning The Best Years of Our Lives.
In 1948, when he was working as a mechanic in his father’s garage, Maloney bought his first aircraft, a Mitsubishi J8M1 Shusui (the Japanese copy of the Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, a rocket-powered interceptor) by paying its unpaid storage charges. There is only one other like it in the world. It is on display at a museum in Komaki, Japan, run by its manufacturer, Mitsubishi. He never stopped collecting, and the museum grounds outside the hangars are filled with interesting aircraft and parts of aircraft.
It doesn’t end there. In another hangar the museum is restoring two more rare aircraft. One of them is the Bell P059A Airacomet, America’s first jet. Of the 66 built only six survive, and the museum’s will be the only one to again take to the sky. The other is the North American O-47 observation plane. Four are known to survive and, again, when its restoration is complete, this example will once again fly.
The one building I did not visit was the library. Through the window I saw shelves brimming with alluring texts and manual more addictive than any opioid substance known to or created by humans. I must save that for my next visit, when the Planes of Fame Air Museum will be a weeklong destination rather than a half-day waypoint. — Scott Spangler, Editor
PS: For those so interested, there’s a photo album on JetWhine’s Facebook page.