Author Archives: Allan Janus

Enter the Santa Copter

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Santa Gets a Lift

Santa Gets a Lift. Image number: NASM-2A49392

The good girls and boys of the Coast Guard Air Station Brooklyn get a visit from Santa, December 1944. Santa’s getting a lift on a Coast Guard HNS-1, the naval version of the Sikorsky R-4, the first helicopter to see active service with the U.S. armed forces.

We’ve mentioned St. Nick’s interest in non-reindeer powered transportation concepts here during previous Christmas seasons. Hoping that Santa makes a timely delivery to your home via copter, blimp, balloon, or the good old-fashion sleigh, the staff and volunteers of the National Air and Space Museum wish that all of our readers, visitors and friends have a fine holiday season.

Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the National Air and Space Museum’s Archives Division.

The Presidential Turkey Arrives by Air

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Turkey

Presidential Turkey. Photo Number: SI-A-33352-F2

 

Suitably clad in a custom-made flying suit and sporting a pair of goggles, President Warren G. Harding’s 1921 Thanksgiving turkey, the gift of the Harding Girls’ Club of Chicago, arrives at the College Park (Maryland) airport on a DH-4 mailplane. Note the rifle at the left of the photograph – why an armed escort was deemed necessary is not explained; but since the custom of granting a pardon to presidential turkeys only began in 1989, maybe the authorities thought he might try to make a break for it.

Oh, and President Harding’s 1922 turkey arrived by battleship…

Allan Janus in a museum specialist in the Museum’s Archives Division.

My Cuban Missile Crisis

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cuban missile crisis

Aerial photograph taken by a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft showing a Soviet SA-2 Missile (V-75 Dvina, Guideline) surface to air missile (SAM) site in La Coloma, Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

Growing up in the Washington, D.C. area during the 1960s was… interesting – History would have a way of occasionally butting into an otherwise typical suburban boyhood. The memory of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration comes back to me in a Proustian sort of way through the taste of hot chocolate, which my father administered to me in an attempt to thaw me out during the bitter cold of January 20, 1961; Ask not what your country can do for you… went right over my head – I was trying to ward off frostbite.

In the fall of 1962, I was eleven – my chief concerns were building models, wangling visits downtown to see my favorite museum, and trying to figure out how to get to see Dr. No and Lawrence of Arabia, both of which opened around that time. I don’t recall when I became aware of the doings in Cuba – that the Soviet Union had shipped missiles there that threatened our survival, and that President Kennedy had ordered a strict naval blockade, and that war was right around the corner. If my parents were worried – and they must have been – they hid it very well, or more likely I was just oblivious. My friends and I at Kensington Junior High had heard that some fathers had disappeared – had been secretly sent to what would later be called Undisclosed Locations. But my dad rather disappointingly stayed put, and the one kid I knew who said his father, who worked for the Government Printing Office, had vanished, was widely suspected of lying.

What I mainly remember of the Cuban Missile Crisis was a map published in either the Washington Post or Star. It showed the Washington area with concentric circles radiating out from the White House, illustrating what sort of effects an H-bomb detonation would have – something similar to this, I think. It showed that the downtown area would essentially be vaporized, and lethal blast effects could be expected all the way out to Chevy Chase Circle on the border of D.C. and Maryland. My friends and I discussed the map endlessly. We, out in the leafy Maryland suburbs, could expect a fair amount of blast, but our sturdy brick ramblers could probably take it, we thought – bad luck on any dads caught downtown, though. But the fallout was worrisome. We could expect, the map warned us, a fair amount of gamma radiation out our way. None of our families had fallout shelters, even though they were conveniently offered for sale at a nearby used car lot. I believe our gang decided that we would just hunker down in our basements and hope for the best. One of the guys pointed out that although the map did show the H-bomb detonating neatly over the White House, the Soviets were quite capable of missing the target – Ground Zero might turn out to be nearby Wheaton Plaza, instead. In which case, all of our careful calculations, and ourselves – were toast…

So my friends and I assumed that we were all going to die, but I don’t recall that we were terribly concerned by the thought. At the height of the crisis, our school had a nuclear attack drill – no duck and cover for us; we were all sent home so we could be blown up with our families. As my buddies and I walked home, our main topic was - was it to be bombers, or missiles? Strolling down Kensington Parkway, we looked up at the clear blue autumn sky, and watched for contrails.

Allan Janus in a museum specialist in the National Air and Space Museum’s Archives Division.

Watch a video of Dino Brugioni, former senior official of the information branch of the National Photographic Interpretation Center tell of the Cuban Missile crisis in Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside (Photographic) Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, recorded on Friday, October 19 in the Airbus IMAX Theater, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA.

Pilot Error, Evidently

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Ivanov

Ivanov's Landing - SI 90-5858

 

In the years before the invention of the flight data recorder, the “black box” that records essential flight data, an aircraft accident investigation could occasionally degenerate into a mere finger-pointing exercise, like this one from Russia during World War I — a group of aviation cadets at the Gatchina Military Flying School near Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) point fingers of scorn at a student pilot identified only as “Ivanov” after his less than perfect landing, fortunately injuring only his dignity. The photograph comes from the collection of Alexander Riaboff (1895-1984) — he’s the finger-pointer at the left — who served in the Russian Army Air Service and was trained at Gatchina. After the Revolution, Riaboff flew in the Red Air Fleet and also with the counterrevolutionary White forces before fleeing in 1920 to Harbin, China. Later, he emigrated with his wife and daughter to the United States and settled in the San Francisco area. Years later, Riaboff wrote up his adventures as a pilot during those tumultuous times, and as edited by National Air and Space Museum curator Von Hardesty, they were published in 1986 as Gatchina Days: Reminiscences of a Russian Pilot.

Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the Archives Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

A Hero of the Titanic in the Files

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Taft & Butt

Photograph by Carl H. Claudy Sr.; Claudy Glass Plate Negative Collection - SI 95-8465

It’s July 26, 1909, and President William Howard Taft (left) has arrived in his superb White Motor Company Model M Steamer at Fort Myer, just across the Potomac from Washington, to watch the Wright brothers’ preparations for the trial flight of their Military Flyer. On the following day, Orville Wright would make a record flight of over an hour, covering approximately 40 miles.

Sitting next to the President is Senator Jonathan Bourne Jr. of Oregon. Taft’s military aide and good friend, Captain Archibald Willingham Butt, is standing in the car. Born in Augusta, Georgia in 1865, Archie (as everyone called him) Butt began his career as a reporter, then served as first secretary to the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. In 1900, Archie received a commission in the U.S. Army. He served in the Philippines for four years, and as Depot Quartermaster in Washington D.C. he met President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. In 1908, Archie was appointed Roosevelt’s chief military aide, and when Taft succeeded Roosevelt as president in 1909, Archie remained at his post. One of his duties was to stand by when Taft became the first president to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a Washington Senators’ game in 1910. In 1911, Butt was promoted to the rank of major.

Loyal to both T.R. and Taft, Archie Butt was caught in the middle of the growing feud that would lead to Roosevelt’s run for the presidency against Taft in 1912. Worn out and in declining health, Archie requested a leave of absence. President Taft granted it, and in the early spring of 1912, Archie left for a six week European tour, accompanied by his longtime companion, Washington artist Francis Davis Millet.

For his return trip, Archie booked passage in first class aboard RMS Titanic for its first Atlantic crossing (ticket number 113050; fare, £26 11s; cabin number B38) and boarded the ship at Southampton on April 10. On the night of the 14th, he dined with Titanic’s captain, Edward J. Smith, and was playing cards when the ship struck an iceberg at 11:40. There are several stories of Archie Butt’s actions before Titanic sank at 2:20 in the morning of April 15 – he was said to have assisted women and children into the lifeboats; one survivor, Irene Harris, contributed a sensational account:

“He became as one in supreme command. You would have thought he was at a White House reception, so cool and calm was he. When the time came he was a man to be feared. In one of the earlier boats fifty women, it seemed, were about to be lowered when a man suddenly panic stricken ran to the stern of it. Maj. Butt shot one arm out caught him by the neck and jerked him backward like a pillow. His head cracked against a rail and he was stunned. ‘Sorry,’ said Maj. Butt, ‘women will be attended to first or I’ll break every damned bone in your body.’… Maj. Butt escorted me to a seat in the bow… he helped me find a space, arranged my clothing about me, stood erect, doffed his hat and smiled and said ‘Good-by.’ And then he stepped back to the deck, already awash. As we rowed away we looked back, and the last I saw of him he was smiling and waving his hand to me.

Major Archibald Butt and his friend Frank Millet both drowned when Titanic went down; Archie’s body was not recovered.

Archibald Butt

Captain Archibald W. Butt. Library of Congress photograph LC-USZC2-6249

 

President Taft was grief-stricken when he heard the news. At a memorial service for Archie back in Augusta, he said, “If Archie could have selected a time to die he would have chosen the one God gave him. His life was spent in self–sacrifice, serving others. His forgetfulness of self had become a part of his nature. Everybody who knew him called him Archie. I couldn’t prepare anything in advance to say here. I tried, but couldn’t. He was too near me. He was loyal to my predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, who selected him to be military aide, and to me he had become as a son or a brother.”

In 1913, Archie’s friends dedicated a fountain to him and to Frank Millet - the Butt-Millet Fountain still stands on the Ellipse, not far from the White House.

Allan Janus is a museum specialist in the National Air and Space Museum’s Archives Division