The National Naval Aviation Museum

Yes, sir, this is one hell of a wondrous place tucked away on Naval Air Station Pensacola. If you breeze through this part of the Gulf Coast, don’t you dare let the pestering wife and screaming kids make you miss one of the great military museums in the world. Before you come in, have a short talk with the fam and mention a whole section dedicated to the important role women have always played in aviation.  For the kids, promise them sights, hands-on exhibits and rides that take them into the wild blue with the Blue Angels.

Do you find yourself saying: “Yeah, sure, another stack of dusty old stuff sitting around for me to stare at.  All the same to you if we just go have a beer?”

No, you dull minded nitwit, it’s not all the same to me.  There are more tentacles of history running through this museum than you’ve ever imagined.  Important history and not just history, but heroic, breathtaking stories that you’ve never heard. History streaked with the blood and gritty determination of men and women who took us from wood and cloth covered airplanes, dangerous and freakishly chancy, to air travel that’s as necessary to the 21^st Century as trains were to the 19^th.

“Wait a sec,” you’re saying, “I thought you said this was Naval Aviation!”  See, you just lack the knowledge, and it’s another reason you need to visit a few museums.  When the dream of manned flight escaped from Orville and Wilbur’s bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio and took it’s first gasping breath on the sandy hills four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a new world was born.  Maybe it was a new wing (pun intended) of the library.  One giant lift-off for mankind. Pick your own metaphor.

Orville Wright

Wilbur Wright

The reality is it’s only since the middle of the 20^th Century that aviation really untangled itself and spawned Army Aviation, Naval Aviation, Air Force Aviation, Commercial Aviation, and General Aviation.  In the beginning, there was only aviation, period.  Yes, yes, I know a stickler will claim the aviation branches came along much earlier.  Ok, you’re right, but Jimmy Doolittle’s 1942 attack on the Japanese mainland was Army B-25 bombers lifting off from a Navy carrier. And who provided the Intelligence?  A naval officer.

B-25 Mitchell 

 No, I’m not going to lead you through all the trials and successes, failures and growth.  And yes, of course the National Naval Aviation Museum focuses on the Naval part, but this museum has so much more to offer, and is superbly organized into World War I, between the wars, World War II, and modern aircraft.  Along the way, you’ll meet the Curtiss Jenny, an aircraft that trained so many pilots following the First World War, including Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and military pilots from all services.  The Jenny in the museum is a cutaway and affords you a firsthand look at the delicate design that just barely kept pilots away from violent death. 

Amelia Earhart

You’ll see flimsy craft like the British WWI airplane the Sopwith Camel. Know how long the average British fighter pilot lasted on the Western Front in World War I?  Three weeks.  How much flying time did the lads get before going to France?  8-12 hours.

Even in World War II, we lost over 14,000 aircraft in training accidents.  Aviation has always required courageous people.

See the bullet hole patches?

How about the Douglas Dauntless, the primary Naval dive bomber of World War II?  You’ll learn all about it and especially the unlikely story of the Dauntless on display. Retired Naval pilots weave through the museum to explain and entertain and thrill and make even the seasoned aviator stay glued to the tales of desperate heroism and miraculous survival.

It’s not just U.S. Naval aircraft on display, also a slew of aircraft flown by the opposition:  the German Fokker D-VII from WWI, Japanese Zero and German Me-262, and Soviet MIGs.

Fokker D VII

Me 262, one of the first jet fighters

Korean War MIG 15

I could write forever, but instead check out a few photos to whet your appetite.   This museum won’t just entertain, but quickly turn you into a budding aviation historian.  Your kids will suddenly want to be aviators and you’ll hear your wife whisper, “Honey, is it ok if we spend the night and come back again tomorrow?”

“Yes, dear, if you insist.”  I applaud your unselfish spirit and budding interest in aviation.  High five!  I take back the part about you being a dull minded nitwit. Now let’s go grab that beer.

http://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/

P-40 Warhawk in the colors of the American Volunteer Group in China

Ball turret from a PBY4, the Navy version of the B-24 Liberator

The Aviators by Winston Groom

As with his book The Generals (http://stroudallover.blogspot.de/2017/03/the-generals-patton-macarthur-marshall.html), Winston Groom takes three historic figures, Rickenbacker, Lindbergh, and Doolittle, and amplifies their lives.  First question:  What the heck do you mean by amplify???

Easy answer.  Most of us, especially those of us who have cut through the air on laughter’s silvered wings, know the names and probably at least one big event in each of these men’s lives:  Rickenbacker was the highest scoring American World War I ace, 1918; In 1927 Lindbergh became the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic from New York to Paris; And, in 1942, less than four months after Pearl Harbor, Doolittle led the famous raid on Tokyo.

Eddie Rickenbacker standing beside his Nieuport 28 

Charles Lindbergh in front of The Spirit of Saint Louis

Lt Col (at the time) Jimmy Doolittle with his Tokyo Raiders

Did you know all three men received the Medal of Honor?  How about the other things that make them stand head and shoulders above the crowd? And what were their contributions to aviation?  The answers are both complex and surprising.

To begin, Groom sets the stage by exploring the times they lived in.  All three saw a plethora of technological advances that took them from the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk (1903), all the way to jets and streaking across both oceans in the comfort of huge commercial airliners.  But that’s far from all.  In their lifetimes, they saw the rise of the common use of the telephone, the radio, the automobile, and the common use of electricity and indoor plumbing in American homes.  Take a moment and consider if even our ‘miracles’ of technology have had a greater impact on daily life.

But, Groom delves deeper, goes farther and tells the often glorious and sometimes horrifying details of these men’s lives.  Before the First World War, Eddie Rickenbacker was a famous racecar driver, in World War II, he barely survived 24 days at sea in a life raft.  Lindbergh suffered the kidnapping death of his first son and flew combat missions in World War II, while Doolittle was an air racer and held both a master’s and PhD from MIT.  And, those are just a few of the highlights of their fascinating lives.  All of them promoted aviation around the globe and were called upon time and again to carry out diplomatic missions and work closely with industry.

When I heard about famous people in long-ago history classes, the names and events seemed so one-dimensional. I always pondered what the figures were really like and what led up to the big events.  Was a life just built around one historic occasion?  Whom did they love?  How did they act when the press wasn’t standing by and snapping photos?  Were they really larger than life, or just normal people cast surreptitiously into the limelight?

In an ever interesting narrative, Winston Groom carries the reader into the varied and very human lives of these giants of aviation.  The conclusion is irrefutable.  None of the three were simply thrown onto the stage of history, nor did they stagger blindly into the public eye.  Their stories are spellbinding from the beginning, as Winston Groom takes you from the dawn of aviation to the jet age.  It’s a fabulous ride.

If you’ve ever been in a cockpit, pulling the stick, pushing up the throttles, fighting off fatigue, dodging bullets, you’ll be in your element with this book.  And if you haven’t?  You’re going to get a heart stopping glimpse of exactly what these men did and what they overcame to stand so tall.