THE PIMA AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM

THE PIMA AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM REMEMBERING THE PLANES AND THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO FLEW THEM

YOU'D THINK, 'IS THIS THE LAST time?'" Dewayne "Ben" Bennett says of those mornings more than 50 years ago when he and the rest of the crew prepared to take off on bombing missions against the Nazis. All they had to do was fly from England to Germany in a plane thousands of pounds overloaded with bombs and fuel. They had to make it past the fighters of the Luftwaffe, the flak of the antiaircraft guns, and hit their target. Then, they had to get home. "Everybody had it, not just me," Bennett says of the fear he felt on those mornings so long ago. He was the pilot of a Boeing B-17 bomber, the man responsible for the lives of the nine men who flew with him. He was 22 years old. His is just one of the many stories told at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson. But these tales are not found in the dry lines of a guidebook or on a plaque in some dusty case. At this museum, history lives and walks and talks.

In hangars and on the field, the more than 250 aircraft on exhibition are joined by the more than 200 volunteers and staff. Like Bennett, a member of the museum's restoration team, they know these planes well. They flew them or worked on the ground to keep them flying or talked them in from control towers. Now they restore them, lead tours for visitors who are interested in them, and tell their own sto-ries, should anyone ask.

"And that's what makes this museum so special," says Executive Director Ed Harrow. "It's the people who take that hard cold metal and give it life."

There is a lot of metal at the private, nonprofit museum, which opened in 1976. There are five hangars and 75 acres full of metal. Exhibits move from the Wright Brothers era to the Space Age, from the muslin and wood replica of the plane that hit the heights at Kitty Hawk in 1903 to the Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird, a black sliver of titanium that reaches supersonic speeds today. Probably the fastest plane on Earth, its best speed remains top secret. But the "Blackbird" made it from coast to coast in 69 minutes and 54 seconds.

As with any museum, value is found in the rarity of its artifacts. The vanishing species of aviation have found a home here, planes like the Budd Conestoga, the last of its kind. About a dozen of these transports were built for service in World War II. Aluminum was in short supply, so this plane was constructed of stainless steel, with no rivets, and spot-welded together.

The museum's collection includes the oldest surviving, least modified Lockheed 10A Electra, the model flown by Amelia Earhart when she disappeared in 1937. Researchers of that particular piece of aviation history come here to study this plane. The Aerospace Lines' B-377SG Super Guppy also gets its share of attention, if only due to its size. Four stories high, this plane was designed to carry rocket parts and now sits overlooking the museum's airfield like an enormous contented dolphin. Another heavy-duty hauler on display is the Douglas C-133B Cargomaster with a belly so big it seems to drag on the ground.

Needle-nosed fighters and helicopters representing military aviation through the Persian Gulf War stand in lines or gather in groups. There also are examples of commercial flight, such as the museum's Lockheed L-049 (C-69) Constellation, the Connie.

The four-engine passenger plane started flying for TWA in 1948, when air travel was an adventure touched with elegance. The museum invites the public to enjoy the relative accessibility of the collection. “You can touch, you can look in the wheel wells and the bomb bays,” says Kirsten Tedesco, deputy director and curator of collections of the museum's library and archives. You can take a guided walking tour, hop on a tram, or wander alone. You can step back in time and into a plane, a Douglas VC-118A Liftmaster, that became Air Force One when it carried Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Note the gauges over the desk where LBJ sat. According to folklore passed on by a guide, the President so besieged the flight crew with questions about air speed and time of arrival, a personal set of gauges was installed in his cabin. At the moment, this is the only plane museum visitors can enter. Explains Tedesco, “They are very hard to preserve if you have people going through them.” There also is a risk factor. The WWII bombers that look so big from the outside are more like rabbit warrens on the inside with their small crawl spaces and catwalks. They were designed for carrying bombs and fuel, not people. But you can duck into the bomb bay of the Boeing B-24J Liberator in Hangar No. 3 and get a sense of what those men must have felt facing hours in that bomber stripped down to bare metal. John Nelson flew in a B-24 in the Pacific, a ball turret gunner, one of those guys who lay in the glass ball on the belly of the plane, no room for a parachute. Ask him what it was like. “It was uncomfortable, cold, and noisy,” he says. The cold could reach 52° F. below zero and lower. No pressurization, no heat, and open windows for the machine guns. You could lose your fingers, your feet, to frostbite. A display case in Hangar No. 3 is dedicated to Nelson. Inside rests a picture of him as a 19-year-old rock-jawed kid from Boise, Idaho, and his last will and testament. On November 16, 1944, eight months after signing that document, Nelson was shot down over the Japaneseheld island of Borneo. The wounded copilot kept the plane flying long enough for the others to get out. There were seven survivors, and Dyak tribesmen on the island came to their aid. “They were just gentle, compassionate, and brave,” Nelson says of his protectors. Seven months later, he was rescued by the Australians. Now he volunteers at the museum where the planes of his war have landed. Nelson's B-24 and the Boeing B-29A over in Hangar No. 4 are buffed to their original gleam. In another hangar, one of Ben Bennett's B-17s holds center stage. The Flying Fortress is part of the 390th Memorial Museum also located on the grounds of the Pima Air and Space Museum. This second museum is run by the veterans and descendants of the 390th Bombardment Group, which flew 301 combat missions over Europe. The planes look today the way they looked then, right down to the names of the girlfriends and wives painted on their sides. Their histories have been researched from the day they rolled out of the factory to their arrival here. That paper chase has resulted in crews being reunited with their planes, not just the type of aircraft, but the exact plane in which they served during the war. "This is the plane,' they tell their families," says Tedesco of those reunions. "And I've seen the tears, too." The tears aren't limited to one generation or nationality. Volunteer Bill Burgin makes models of historic aircraft for the museum. He tells the story of a German visitor seen weeping in front of Burgin's model of the Focke-Wulf 190, a Luftwaffe fighter. The man was the son of German ace Heinz Baer, and this was the model of his father's plane. The nostalgia and melancholy found at the museum are offset by the whimsical visions of humanity's relentless search for a better way to get to the sky and stay there. Wilbur and Orville Wright's craft of wood and cloth is joined by others seemingly made out of a wing and a prayer. Hang gliders and ultralights swing from the ceiling in Hangar No. 1. Beneath them sit "homebuilts," including the miniscule yellow and black Bumble Bee.

Holding the record as “the world's smallest piloted airplane,” it boasts a six-footsix-inch wingspan and a cockpit with no apparent room for anyone verging on normal stature. But, as they must have said after that day at Kitty Hawk, it flew.

Also in this hangar is the display dedicated to women's role in aviation, including the WASP, Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II. They ferried planes from factories to fields, test-piloted, and flew the targets for air-to-air gunnery practice.

“We were doing a job so a man could go to war,” says Ruth Helm, a member of the corps of approximately 1,100 women. Thirty-eight would die during their service.

“I flew 27 different types of Army aircraft,” Helm says. Her favorites were the tough little fighters like the Bell P63E King Cobra, one of which now sits like a silver mosquito underneath the massive wing of the museum's B-29. The Space Age calls for computers and rockets, and the museum has moved in this direction as well. This year the museum plans to open the Space Exploratorium and Challenger Learning Center of the Southwest. The 20,000-square-foot building will house a simulated Challenger mission control center and space capsule. Classes of schoolchildren will be able to participate in their own space missions, as close as possible to the real thing, right down to the uniforms. Other visitors can watch their progress to the stars from a gallery filled with space-related exhibits.

Another type of space adventure is available through the museum's “Morphis” ride. Utilizing a large screen, ear-popping audio effects, and a rock-and-roll motion, this black capsule takes 20 people at a time on a roller coaster across Mars or on a fastmoving tour through aviation history that includes a World War I dogfight.

Says Museum Director Harrow, “It doesn't matter whether you're a male or female, whether you love airplanes or not. There's something here for everyone.” But what does tend to fascinate at this museum is that love of the individual planes you see in both the visitors and staff. Watch a visitor run his hand down the side of an old bomber. Listen to the stories the volunteers tell. There's the one about the woman who came in and reminded a volunteer that she built those planes. Like Rosie, she put those rivets in, one by one.

And you feel that love when “Lumpy” Lumpkin talks. Lumpkin, a former Air Force missile mechanic, volunteered at the museum in 1984. One plane caught his eye, a Douglas B-18B. This bomber flew over the Caribbean, chasing German subs and flying night patrol for convoys. For some, that wasn't enough.

"A lot of people said she didn't do anything," Lumpkin states. "She didn't fly in combat."

In 1989 Lumpy began to work on the plane's restoration. Much had to be rebuilt, made by hand, made by volunteers. Although the interior is not finished, the plane is on outdoor display. Lumpkin is now a member of the restoration staff and continues to oversee the project.

"She did her job, and everybody ignored her," says Lumpkin. But not him, and not this museum. Here they remember the planes and the men and women who flew them and kept them flying.

Ask Frank Pierce. He flew in the Pacific, and he can tell you about the Vought F-4U4 Corsair, a tidy fighter bomber.

"It was the best plane the U.S. ever built," he says. "We finally had a plane that could dogfight a Zero and beat it."

He'll also play with you a bit.

"What's fun is flying it at night," he tells you. "No lights on the plane, no lights on the carrier."

What Pierce, Pima Air and Space Museumvolunteer, doesn't mention is that he was awarded the Navy Cross for one of his missions. If you see him at the museum, you might ask him about those days when young men and women flew into history and then came home.

WHEN YOU GO

The Pima Air and Space Museum is located at 6000 E. Valencia Road, Tucson, AZ 85706; (520) 574-9658. To get there, take Interstate 10 to Exit 267, Valencia Road, and drive east. The museum, with a clearly marked entrance, sits on the south side of the street. The hours are daily except Thanksgiving and Christmas from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.

The 390th Memorial Museum, on the same site, is open the same days from 10 A.M. to 4:45 P.M. To inquire, call (520) 574-0287.

Because of the size of the museum's facilities and collections, plan on spending at least three to four hours there.

Admission ranges from $4 to $7.50.