Aviation Museums: The Face of California

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

The almost perfect weather that brought the movie makers to Southern California a hundred years ago pleased others playing with another contraption, the flying machine. Southern California has a long aviation history, both civilian and military. San Diego, for example, celebrated its Centennial of Naval Aviation in February 2011 with a fly-past of 189 aircraft, the last being an armada of 35 in formation.

Former military bases scatter the land in the Golden State some, no doubt, making developers drool but those who enjoy the private flying of so-called “general aviation” are captivated to find even lesser known places have their aviation museums.

San Diego

We have two air museums in our own city. The San Diego Air & Space Museum is easily found in Balboa Park. The city is proud of its connection with Charles Lindbergh. The Spirit of St. Louis was built here in 1927 and our airport is named after him. A replica of Lindbergh’s plane has pride of place in the rotunda of the museum. The replica is actually the museum’s second as the first (that had actually flown over Paris in 1967 at the Paris Air Show) was destroyed by an arsonist in 1978. The original, of course, hangs in Washington, DC.

The San Diego Air & Space Museum covers the very beginnings of flying and continues on though the barnstorming era, aircraft in war and the United States’ space successes

About ten miles north, the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar sits on a vast flat acreage with laid out, in the open, the Marines’ planes of battle: The Flying Leatherneck Museum. Locals drive past it every day and take smile at how all military people end of loving San Diego – and retiring here when their careers are over. Once a year we look up at the skies and savor our own Air Show.

The aircraft above are: top left clockwise: Grumman Wildcat; North American PBJ-1J (B-25) Mitchell; Douglas Skyhawk A4; Sikorsky CH-53A/D Sea Scallion; Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG 15 Fagot; McDonnell Douglas RF-4B Phantom II. For further details.

Riverside

Miramar bustles with energy but March Air Force Reserve Base has seen busier days. It is the home of the 452 Air Mobility Wing. As with the Flying Leatherneck Museum visitors should check the website first and call if they hope to visit because it has a somewhat derelict look to it.

The courtyard has memorials including a tribute to the Lockheed P-38 Lightning and a bust of Jimmy Doolittle, the American hero who led his pilots off the USS Hornet to bomb Tokyo in 1942. A Douglas A-26 Invader stands guard beyond: the attack aircraft was the last plane to bomb North Korea, dropping its bomb load three minutes before the cease fire in 1953.

Santa Monica

There’s not much going on at The Museum of Flying in that coastal city at the moment. The museum was originally established in 1974 by the Douglas family with its signature airplane: the original Douglas World Cruiser that circumnavigated the globe 50 years earlier. The museum has moved twice and is doing so again. Both website and the museum are under construction.

It was always fun to visit in the old days. One of the homes of Warbirds, it had a great collection of fighter aircraft -- and visitors never knew if they were going to see a Supermarine Spitfire or more likely, a North American P-51 Mustang poking its nose out of a hanger.

Palm Springs

Palm Springs has a lot going for it: interesting museums; the long-established Palm Springs Follies; the world’s largest rotating aerial tramcar that goes way up China Canyon, (even if it’s summer, bring a jacket); and a neat little airport with a cool air museum.

Its volunteer docents wander its hangers, most of them ex-servicemen who served their nation and protected their country in World War II. There is a powerful sense of the past here, of duty and of service, even of sacrifice.

The Boeing B-17 the Flying Fortress always commands attention. Developed in the 1930s it became the American long range workhorse in Europe. It was able to take punishment but of the 17 Medals of Honor received by crew members, eleven were given posthumously. The Palm Springs Air museum also pays tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen and to the military nurses whose skills were vital to maintain the bombing aircrews.

Chino

Chino, a small city of about 70,000 people lies 40 miles east of Los Angeles. Its little airport figured large in World War II. In Chino, aviation enthusiasts get a “twofer.” Two air museums stand side by side on the airport, one Planes of Fame on the East side and the other, Yanks Air Museum, on the north edge. Between the two sits perky little Flo’s Café. Our waitress mentions they’ve served lunch to Chuck Yeager, the famous fighter and test pilot; to Harrison Ford, the well known actor; and to Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was, of course, famous for being famous (and for being married nine times and her remark: “I’m a good housekeeper. Every time I get divorced I keep the house!”)

Planes of Fame  

Exhibits vary from a 1903 Wright Flyer replica to a mockup of an Apollo Command module that shows how little room the three astronauts had on their way to the Moon.

Edward T. Maloney began his museum here with seven planes he’d rescued from the scrap yard in 1957. It was the first permanent aviation museum in the Western United States and the first museum to fly its aircraft, something now done by many flying museums around the world. The museum now has more than 150 aircraft of all types and three dozen are flyable.

The main focus is the airplane in World War II though it has a few from WWI. The museum has a flyable Mitsubishi Zero and a static display Mikoyan-Gurevich Fresco MiG 17. It has WWII military vehicles, too, and the locals are evidently used to seeing a Sherman tank rumbling along the farm lanes.

The museum has a satellite museum in Arizona 25 miles from the Grand Canyon. As with all those museums that have significant expenses to preserve history, donations to a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization is tax-deductible.

The MiG 17 looks all business. The Soviet interceptor was widely used by the North Vietnamese in the VietNam War. The MiG was slower than American fighters but it wasn’t designed to fight superior American planes just intercept the slower bombers. Its maneuverability made it successful against opposing aircraft.

Yanks Air Museum 

Like its neighbor, Yanks is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization. Its focus is showing what the United States has built over the last 100 years. With 170 planes over ten acres, it has the largest private collection of American WWII fighters and dive bombers in the world.

Only two of its planes are foreign but they are surely interesting: the V1 Doodlebug flying bomb that Hitler and Goering designed to bring London to its knees and the Japanese Yokosuka MXY-7 “Ohka 11 Cherry Blossom” kamikaze plane.  

Yanks Air Museum offers visitors another experience: its restoration wing open to visitors. You could easily spend a morning wandering the hangers but this museum anticipates what you might want to know such as: What are we looking at? Why? What was special about this plane? Were planes with this name famous in some event in history?

Not only does the Yanks Air Museum want you to take memories back from your visit but the staff wants to make sure you are enjoying your visit. The museum was started by Charles and Judith Nichols in 1973. They were developing a lumber, property and industrial business in town. They started with a single plane , a Beech Staggerwing. The projects are growing. Now family members work in the project. Says Christen Wright, the director and curator, “We have the nicest of visitors -- all enthusiastic about aviation. In all the years we’ve been in business we’ve never had a bad check.”

A Curtiss JN-4D Jenny (90 horsepower, top speed 75 mph, 6070 built) swings above you as you enter the first hanger. The basic Army trainer for WWI for 95 percent of all American pilots, it became the basis of the barnstorming age after the war. The plane favored by Amelia Earhart and used in her final flight, the UC-40A Electra Jr. sparkles farther into the hanger. The first all metal and twin engine built by Lockheed, it was in, 1936, the fastest transport plane in the world. In another hanger a Norden Bombsight competes with an aviator’s somewhat skimpy First Aid Kit]

There’s lots to look at and there’s never enough time at the Yanks Air Museum. There is, however, a lot of room to move around the planes. Another Lockheed, a P-38 Lightning is standing tall. The card says it is set up as a F-5G-6-LO P-38L unarmed for photography purposes. With twin booms and twin engines the Lightning had literally twice the power of its predecessors. And it was a P-38 that exacted vengeance on Admiral Yamamoto in 1943, payback for his planning Pearl Harbor.

When standing under this P-38, it’s hard for any aviation enthusiast not to recall the death of the French author and pioneer aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He was flying a P-38 on a photography mission off the south coast of France on July 31, 1944. It’s said a Luftwaffe fighter pilot, Horst Rippert, was scrambled to deal with the intruder. He was apparently lying on his bunk on alert but reading the St. Exupéry book Flight To Arras when the German alarm sounded. He took off, gained altitude, shot down the unarmed St. Exupéry and returned to his bunk -- in a hurry because he was enjoying his book so much!

So went another of the Greatest Generation.