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Aviation Museums

An Air Zoo View of Space

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In introducing the Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Experience, its president, Troy Thrash said it was purposely designed “to be a different environment for an air and space museum.” There is no better example of this than the exhibit focused on the lunar landing of Apollo 11 in 1969. Instead of telling the story with space hardware, the Air Zoo connects to the environment in which we all (at least all of us who were sentient beings then) shared in the experience, on TV in our living rooms.

Turning the corner to the exhibit, with its shag carpeting, cathode cabinet television on which Neil Armstrong made that first step for a man in an endless loop, and the fiberglass TV tray where many of us ate many a night, was a time traveling gut punch that stopped me in my tracks. It revived my mom and dad and shaved the decades of life from memory and put me rapt and cross-legged on the floor with my sister. Short of looking at Michael Collins’ lunar station at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, this is the most important Apollo exhibit I’ve ever seen because it allows people to relate to a moment in history personally and physically.

It’s a theme that continues through this section of the Air Zoo. Gort, the robot enforcer from one of my favorite science fiction films, 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Robby the Robot, who first appeared in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and made subsequent appearances in other films and TV shows, including Lost in Space, flank the portal to Alien Worlds and Androids. The Air Zoo rented the traveling exhibit in 2015, said Thrash, and set it up to expand the space exhibit and tell the story of planetary space exploration beyond the shuttle and space station. The exhibit’s owner retired it in 2019, and Kalamazoo is its permanent home.

Building on the theme of robotics and exploration of space, visitors meet other pop icons like C3PO, R2D2, and BB8, “and no discussion of exoskeletons would be complete without Iron Man,” said Thrash. Standing in testament to the possibility of other life forms is the eponymous Alien, which helps tell the story of the microbiome. “It’s a different way for kids to connect with science.”

But this section of the Air Zoo has not forsaken the hardware geek. There are wheels from several different Mars rovers, and capsules from Projects Mercury and Gemini. First, there is a Gemini crew trainer, a fixed spacecraft procedures simulator. The orange and white El KaBong is a boilerplate Gemini capsule that NASA used in tests of the Para-Sail Program, a Rogallo wing that replaced the traditional parachutes used to slow the final descent. “It is a NASA artifact, and it was in pretty bad shape” Thrash said. “NASA said if you want to restore it, you can display it here.”

The Air Zoo’s space has its own moon rock, from Apollo 15. But turning to the living room exhibit, this is “my favorite space,” Thrash said, and they christened it on the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11. “Everything here was donated by someone locally—this was in my house when Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. It’s really cool to see grandparents come and sit on the couch and tell their grandkids this is where I was when it happened, watching it on TV.”

Air Zoo: Unique Airplanes

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What makes the aerospace menagerie on display at Kalamazoo’s Air Zoo special is its unique airplanes, as in the only one in the world, the sole survivor of a specific make and model. With its black skin fading into the main display floor’s studio lighting, you have to look closely to see the second cockpit bump on the SR-71B trainer (or read the sign). The Curtiss XP-55 Ascender, on the other hand, is spotlighted in a back corner, standing guard next to the entrance to the World War II exhibit hall. And in the restoration building, which faces the Kellogg/Kalamazoo International Flight Line, visitors can watch, and learn from, the volunteers restoring the only F-117 Nighthawk on display at a civilian museum.

All three aircraft are on long-term loan from either the National Museum of the United States Air Force or the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. Lockheed built two SR-71B trainers. One of them was destroyed in a landing accident and the survivor retired to the Air Zoo after its last flight in 1999 with NASA at Edwards Air Force Base. The Air Zoo welcomed it to its exhibit area on April 23, 2003. It built steps and a platform so the curious can peer into the cockpit windows, and it opened the canopies on one of its open-cockpit weekends in September.

The other unique airplanes required a bit more work, said Air Zoo President Troy Thrash, and it was the institution’s restoration reputation that brought them to Kalamazoo. Curtiss built three XP-55 Ascenders during World War II. All three of the canard pushers crashed, Thrash explained. “Only this one was salvageable. It is a Smithsonian artifact. Knowing our restoration capabilities, the Smithsonian asked us if we wanted to take on this project. If we did, then we could have it here on long-term loan. It took us quite a few years to restore this airplane, but we are happy to say that we have the only XP-55 Ascender in the world.”

Another unique aspect to the Air Zoo’s restoration effort realized the only civilian museum display of the F-117. “About four years ago we found out that the Air Force was going to release four F-117s per year (for about eight years) to museums,” said Thrash. “Everyone who wanted one put in an application, so we did. Three years ago, they invited us to Tonopah [Nevada], where these airplanes live so we could see first-hand the challenges. It is really cool to say we want an F-117, it is another when you think about what’s involved.

In deciding who among the requesting institutions would receive the aircraft, Thrash said, “The Air Force concerned that a museum would get an airplane and wouldn’t have the time or money needed to restore the [demilitarized airframes stripped of all their stealthy secret stuff]. Their big question was, How long, from the time the airplane arrives will it be on display? About 10 minutes, because we do all our restoration work on the exhibit floor in the Flight Discovery Center.”

Earning his jet experience in the Air Force as an F-104 Starfighter crew chief (including the F-104 in the Air Zoo collection), Dick Klass is the F-117 restoration project manager. “When the F-177 arrived, the wings and vertical tails were off, as were all of the leading edges, which were proprietary secrets that actually belonged to Lockheed, who leased them to the Air Force.”

Receiving little more than the airframe, the restoration crew had to figure out how to fabricate 210 feet of leading and trailing edges. “And we had to figure out all the angles. There are more angles than you can shake a stick at,” said Klass. “Our problem was to connect the top and the bottom. Do you weld it? Do we make some sort of blocks that we could screw into it? One of the guys came up with the idea of using piano hinge. It adapts itself to any angle.”

When the team of volunteers gets the edges finished the way they want, they will fill the piano hinge’s nooks and crannies with a filler that has the consistency of warm butter. “It gets in between all the seams. We put it on with a spatula and push it in with a rubber gloved hand,” said Klass. “When it dries, we sand it smooth.” The team uses a heavier filler over the rivets that hold the hinge in place.

Unlike traditional jets, the F-117 doesn’t have tailpipes. Klass found a photo of the louvered trailing edge exhaust of the engines buried in the wing. Looking at the photo, Klass wondered what the white rectangles were, so he Googled F-117 exhaust. Leading the results was “Part 5: Nozzles and Exhausts” of an Aviation Week series, “A Closer Look a Stealth.” Once the team finds the right color, it will add the replica heat reflecting tiles.

Before the Air Force released the F-117s to museums, it sandblasted the radar absorbing material that coats the airframe. “They did a very poor job of it,” said Klass, pointing to hollow spots in the skin between the underlying frames. “We debated replacing the panels, but they are .125 thousandths thick, and new aluminum to replace them would cost about $3,000 a panel.”

Bondo doesn’t work well over large areas because it will bow and crack, especially with temperature changes. Looking at photos of other F-117s on museum display to suss out the solutions employed by other museums, “they all have the same [hollow-spot] problem,” Klass said, so like all the others, the Air Zoo’s F-117, called Shaba, will have hollow spots.

Pointing to the airplane’s name painted on the open door of the weapon bay, Klass said each F-117s in the Air Force fleet received a unique name. “Shaba” is Arabic for “ghost.” The signatures of many of the airplane’s maintainers and pilots surround the moniker. The pilot’s call sign was a combination of “Bandit” and ang graduation number from F-117 transition training.

“Here’s Bandit 512; he was the 512th pilot graduated to fly 117s. There were only 62 F-117s, but they flew for a long time so I’ve seen pilot numbers into the 700s,” said Klass. And with its arrival, it adds the modern era to the Air Zoo’s display of unique aircraft.

The Air Zoo, an Extraordinary Aerospace Destination

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Mostly because of its alterative name, I’ve known about the Kalamazoo Air Zoo for decades, but despite a number of trips to mitten Michigan on other assignments, I never made time to visit its home at the southwest corner of the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport. If you’re considering a visit, don’t make my mistake and think the Zoo is just another small-market museum.

Far from it. The Air Zoo Aerospace & Science Experience is an extraordinary, must visit aerospace destination that embodies the premier elements of well known and visited destinations such at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum and the national museums of naval aviation and air force with unique combination of inclusive, hands-on experiences unavailable at any other institution I’ve ever visited (and as my wife will attest, I’ve visited way too many of them).

At EAA AirVenture this year I ran into the hulk of an SBD-1 fished out of Lake Michigan in 1994 after its last, and unsuccessful operation in 1942 on the training carrier USS Wolverine during World War II. It was on a trailer, bound for restoration at the Zoo. Knowing that the Navy is finickily particular about its aerial artifacts and the institutions it deals with, it drove me to plan a visit. Learning that the Zoo is the only civilian institution with a F-117 that it is restoring on its exhibit floor made a visit imperative.

This was not an easy decision. From my home outside of Oshkosh, as the crow flies, Kalamazoo is 190 miles away. If you’re not a crow, driving over the top of Lake Michigan covers 589 miles; driving under it 330 miles. Either way, it’s an all-day drive thanks to the toll roads and eternal traffic of the Chicago metroplex. We split the difference and splurged on the SS Badger, the car ferry and National Historic Landmark that connects US 10 between Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and Ludington, Michigan.

Research did not emotionally prepare me for the Zoo. An airplane I’d first met in 1976, Sue Parrish’s Pink P-40N, filled the atrium airspace in the Flight Innovation Center. With her husband, Pete, a World War II Marine aviator, Sue, a WASP, co-founded the Zoo in 1979. I met her and her airplane when she visited her friend and sister WASP, who operated the flight school at Long Beach, California, where I was learning to fly. On the walls that protected the P-40 were banners for upcoming events, including weekend cockpit crawls in different airplanes during September.

Troy Thrash, the Zoo’s president and CEO since 2013, led me down a serpentine cloud tunnel that led to the main exhibit hall, which opened in 2004. The wide-open panorama stopped me dead. With so much to take in, my brain disconnected from everything but my eyes. Tracing the history of flight from the first hot air aeronauts to space exploration the Zoo synergistically coordinated its artifacts with a 30,000-square foot hand painted mural created by two artists over 11 months.

Artists had similarly painted the exhibit hall’s floor. Grass and pavers covered the left side of the hall that spanned early aviation to World War II. Setting on It were a Sopwith Camel and Spad from World War I, a Ford Trimotor, B-25, and the world’s only surviving Curtiss XP-55 Ascender. Amidships was the bow of the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) with an F-14 nose-down and ready for launch. Next to it was an F-8, with an F-18 cued up for the catapult. Above and behind them was the carrier’s island. And to their right was the world’s only surviving SR-71B, the two-seat Blackbird.

The main exhibit hall was designed “to be a different environment for an air and space museum,” said Thrash, describing it as part museum and part theme park with four rides, in balloons, biplanes, and parachutes. “People who love airplanes love airplanes. At the same time, there are so many people who don’t realize that they love the science and technology behind the airplane, and their history as well. So, we designed this space to display different reasons for people to come to the Zoo.”

Describing the diversity of the regional and Kalamazoo community, “we want everyone, especially young people, to see themselves reflected in these heroes of aviation and space that we celebrate,” said Thrash. “A small piece of that is this Smithsonian exhibit called Black Wings, American Dreams of Flight. It traces the history of Black Americans from Bessie Coleman to Mae Jemison and Ronald McNair.”

The Zoo crew continues to expand the big women in aviation and space exhibits that are situated throughout the museum and highlight women from the “real riveting Rosies of World War II” to today, Thrash continued. Exploring later on my own, the mural, among other things, subtly but without equivocation, reinforced the level of detail the museum employed to reflect the community it serves. While airplanes of the different eras fly on the mural near the exhibit hall ceiling, families and individuals enjoying picnics at the floor level make it clear all are welcome here.

To be continued—If you enjoyed this story, why not SUBSCRIBE to JetWhine, if you haven’t already, and please share it with anyone who might find it interesting. — Scott Spangler, Editor

 

Museum of Flight and Aviation’s Next Gen

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IMG_5693Carrying no expectations, I walked through the main door of Seattle’s Museum of Flight when it opened last Friday and was immediately overwhelmed by the airy, light filled Great Gallery. With aircraft of all types from all eras, it provides a comprehensive history of aviation from the Wrights to the day before yesterday in a single glance. Immediately I felt the need to sit down.

What was most impressive about the array of aircraft before me was their arrangement. Above me was a modern cruise missile, and above that was its predecessor, the ramjet-powered German V-1 Buzz Bomb. And to the right side of my field of view was the ramjet-powered Lockheed D-21B drone affixed to the back of its mother ship, the Lockheed M-21 Blackbird. In the Aviation Pavilion, when you come down the steps from the Concorde’s forward door you see the Boeing’s airline hopes, the 247D. Immediately behind it is the airplane that realized those commercial transport hopes, the Douglas DC-2.

IMG_5794 But these are things that only a truly sick aviation geek would see and appreciate. More important than one of the best and most diverse collections I’ve seen at any museum was the quality and quantity of people doing what I was going before lunch on a beautiful, sunny Seattle Friday—looking at airplanes and learning about the people who flew them.

The number of elementary school age kids there with their parents surprised me. There were hundreds of them, and middle and high schoolers as well, with a smattering of college kids, usually a flight of two, one male, one female, both armed with phones locked and loaded.

IMG_5764Divide the hundreds of kids by 10 and you have the number of of nattily attired docents who could have been their grandparents, and all of them had eager eyes that said, “ASK ME A QUESTION!”” And they answers they shared were really adventure yarns told with the enthusiasm unmatched by any campfire. Others were bedtime stories swaddled in warm affection. Regardless, those of us within earshot were rapt.

What made my visit—and has tempered my less than rosy hope’s for aviation’s future—was the unseen but overheard comment of one youngster to his or her mom. Facing the life-size stature of a crewman dressed for flight and standing before a B-17, the kid said, “See mommy, this is how men dressed for war, just like in Wonder Woman.”

IMG_5779 Throughout the museum were similar statues, each of them dressed appropriately for the aircraft they stood beside. A mechanic on a work stand was turning a wrench on a B-29’s R3350, and a captain and flight attendant were striding purposefully toward the stars leading up (way up) to the prototype Boeing 747 (one of many aircraft, including a retired Air Force One, that visitors could walk though). And then there was this guy, standing by the closed air stair door at the tail end a Boeing 727. That would be D.B. Cooper.

IMG_5798Still overwhelmed and drowning in sights, sounds, and information, I struggle to summarize my visit that has been like no other. Maybe personality is the best word. All museums have a personality. Some are somber and serious. Others are vainglorious. And a few are about as exciting as a high school history lecture by a teacher counting the days until retirement. But the Museum of Flight is the cool teacher, engaged, and excited about sharing kernels of previously unknown knowledge that brings life to aircraft—and the people who designed, built, flew, and maintained them. If you are ever within several hundred miles of this magical place, visit, bring the family, and dedicate the whole day. You’ll need it. — Scott Spangler, Editor

Overwhelmed at Planes of Fame Air Museum

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Day10-45There 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.

Day10-14It 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?

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