Category Archives: Hidden Treasures

Lion Cubs? Yeah, We’ve Got Lion Cubs, Too.

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Ever since our colleagues over at the National Zoo introduced their seven beautiful lion cubs to the public, some of the staff here at the National Air and Space Museum have been feeling a bit envious. Yes, we have priceless historic artifacts like the 1903 Wright Flyer and the Spirit of St. Louis; but lacking a single lion cub or even a panda, we do have something of a cuteness gap – we simply can’t compete with the Zoo when it comes down to Cute.

Roscoe Turner and Gilmore

Roscoe Turner and Gilmore. (80-12371, National Air and Space Museum Archives)

But a sifting of the files in the Museum’s Archives Division actually turned up a respectable number of lion cubs in photographic form. The most famous of them is Gilmore, shown above, posing with his partner Roscoe Turner (1895-1970) on Turner’s Lockheed Air Express 3. Turner was one of the most memorable figures from the Golden Age of flight – winner of the Bendix Trophy and three-time winner of the Thompson Trophy, he was known for his splendid custom-designed uniforms. In 1930, Turner was flying for the Gilmore Oil Company, which used a lion’s head as its trademark.  Thinking that having a real lion might boost publicity, he adopted a 3-week old cub and named him after the company. Little Gilmore was an immediate hit with the public, and with the possible exception of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, Gilmore became the most famous lion of the 1930s.

Gilmore

Gilmore, outfitted in his parachute and harness, with Roscoe Turner. (99-40528, National Air and Space Museum Archives)

But Gilmore was not immediately charmed by the idea of flight. Roscoe told the story of the cub’s first flight:

He was a pretty tired and nervous little cub when it was over. He was all right until we began to take off, but the moment the plane left the ground he made one terrified dive for  Mrs. Turner’s lap and stayed there. It was weeks before he stopped trying to scramble in someone’s lap when we took off…

The Humane Society raised fears of Gilmore’s in-flight safety, so Roscoe had a cub-size parachute and harness made for him. He’s wearing the ‘chute in the photograph above, and…

parachute harness

Gilmore's parachute and harness

… Gilmore’s parachute and harness are on display at the Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center. Gilmore quickly became a confident flyer, logging over 25,000 miles in the air and working the stick with Roscoe’s assistance, but in turbulent weather, he would still curl up in Roscoe’s lap. But it wasn’t long…

Gilmore

Roscoe Turner with Gilmore, full-grown. (78-13936, National Air and Space Museum Archives)

… Before Gilmore grew too large for Roscoe’s lap. He was grounded, retiring first to the Turner home in Beverly Hills, and finally ending his days in a California wildlife park, with Roscoe footing his hefty food bills. “For a long time he paid my bills; now it’s my turn,” Roscoe said.

Gilmore

Gilmore

Gilmore died in 1952 at the age of 22. When Roscoe Turner died in 1970, he left Gilmore to the National Air and Space Museum. Turner’s Boeing 247-D is exhibited in the National Mall Building, and his RT-14 Meteor racer can be seen at the Udvar-Hazy Center. As for Gilmore, he’s currently in storage at the Museum’s Paul E. Garber Facility.

Whiskey and Soda

From left to right: Soda, Douglas MacMonagle, Raoul Lufbery and Whiskey. (2006-21463, National Air and Space Museum Archives)

The pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille – Americans flying for the French air service – had a pretty good selection of mascots – dogs, cats, Esther the civet cat, and a fox. But the most famous of the Escadrille’s mascots were the lion cubs Whiskey and Soda – that’s Whiskey, above, gnawing on the ace Raoul Lufbery as Soda and pilot Douglas MacMonagle watch. Whiskey was “… a cute, bright-eyed baby who tried to roar in a most ferocious manner, but who was blissfully content the moment one gave him a finger to suck.” Unfortunately, Whiskey later made the mistake of eating the Escadrille’s commander’s expensive new uniform cap, and the lions were exiled to the Paris Zoo. But they’re commemorated on the Lafayette Escadrille Memorial at Villeneuve l’Etang near Paris with life-sized sculptures.

Henry Tyndall Merrill

Henry Tyndall "Dick" Merrill and Princess Doreen. (7B06596, National Air and Space Museum Archives)

Henry Tyndall “Dick” Merrill (1894 – 1982) and Princess Doreen peer from the cockpit of Merrill’s mail plane. Merrill started as a barnstormer, flying a war surplus Curtiss JN-4 Jenny, He later became an air mail pilot, and later still he  “flew the Hump” as a civilian pilot during World War II, and serving as Eastern Air Lines ‘ senior pilot for many years. Merrill spent much of his time on the ground at racetracks, and he named Princess Doreen after a favorite horse.

lion cub mascot

Mascot belonging to Luftwaffe bomber group Kampfgeschwader 76. (74-3126, National Air and Space Museum Archives)

One more lion cub appears in our files – a mascot belonging to Luftwaffe bomber group Kampfgeschwader 76. The group’s motto, Ran an’ n Speck, means “Let’s get the bacon”; possibly the equivalent to our “let’s pig out”. Whatever it means, Smithsonian visitors now know that the National Zoo doesn’t have a corner of cuddly lion cubs – we’ve got the cute, too. If only we had a couple of air and space-related panda photos in the files, too…

Allan Janus is a museum specialist for the Museum’s Archives Division, and is the author of Animals Aloft.

Update: It turns out that we do have a couple of panda photographs in the files – thanks to Dr. Don Moore of the National Zoo for reminding us of the specially emblazoned FedEx Boeing 777 Panda Express which flew the Zoo’s four and a half year old panda Tai Shan to China back in February.

FedEx "Panda Express." Photograph by Dane Penland, National Air and Space Museum.

Under the Lime-Green Leisure Suit

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Getting ready to move gives you a chance to pull all those old boxes out from the back corners of your closets.  You know what’s in them – like that box with Uncle Bob’s 1970s lime-green polyester leisure suit – but it’s always good to double check these things.  It’s no different when you’re preparing to move an archival collection.  But first, an historical digression:

At the end of World War II, intelligence teams from the Allies went through Europe and Japan looking for scientific and technical developments that might be of interest.  Besides retrieving equipment (Operation Lusty) and scientists and engineers (Operation Paperclip), Allied teams gathered and microfilmed documents – hundreds of thousands of documents.  Eventually the Air Documents Research Center (ADRC) at Wright Field, Ohio (now part of Wright-Patterson AFB) assembled and indexed 50,000 or so aerospace-related documents as the Captured Air Technical Documents Collection (or CATD) and distributed microfilm copies to a number of research institutions.

Flash forward 20 years, when the technology represented by those documents had become less than state-of-the-art.  The Defense Documentation Center (DDC), which held a copy of the CATD film, realized that not only was there not a lot of call for the material anymore, but a quarter of all the requests they did receive came from the National Air Museum.  After some phone calls, memos, and the like, DDC agreed to transfer their CATD microfilm – lock, stock, and card index – to the Museum.  Museum staff sorted the film into two groups – 5,000 or so rolls covered by the card index (and associated “book-style” indexes) and another 3,000 or so rolls of other stuff, mainly duplicates of the first group.  By the time I started here 20+ years ago, this second group was still in boxes (about 40 cubic feet or 1.3 cubic meters worth) marked as “Duplicate German-Japanese Film.”

Now you may be asking (having done some quick math) why was this duplicate stuff sitting on a shelf for 40 years?  The answer is a combination of lots of other material needing work, limited staff, and priorities.  The CATD microfilm has been research-accessible this whole time.  Although dealing with (and disposing of) the duplicate film would free up 40 cubic feet of space, the consistent decision has been to direct our staff efforts to making other parts of the Museum’s document collections available.

Until now.  Since we are preparing to move to the new wing of the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, we have to deal with it.  Remember that leisure suit?  What if that’s not the only thing Uncle Bob stuck in that box?  Suppose you look underneath and find great-grandpa’s World War I aviator helmet and Great-Aunt Maude’s entry form and time sheet from the first “Powder-Puff” Derby?

microfilm

If you’ve ever wondered what 1,500 rolls of microfilm look like...

So, when we pulled those 3,000 rolls of “duplicate” film what did we find?  Sure enough, there are those poor-quality diazo duplicates of the ADRC film (read “leisure suit”), but that was only about half of the film.  And about half of the rest was good-quality silver duplicates.

And the rest?  If you’re still doing the math, that leaves about 750 rolls.  750 rolls that are not duplicates of anything else in the collection.  That’s on the order of 750,000 pages.  We have a general idea of what’s there: documents filmed by Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT) teams at various German industrial, administrative, and academic sites (although not a complete set of FIAT film); documents microfilmed by the Technical Liaison at Osigo, Italy; Russian technical journals from 1946-1947; additional rolls of Peenemünde records; even some rolls from the main ADRC series that were thought to be missing or lost.

But there are no listings, no indexes, no way for us to know specifically what is on any of this film.  Yet.  But we know it’s there now, and that’s the first step in making it available.

Aren’t you glad Uncle Bob saved that box?

Paul Silbermann is a Museum Specialist in the Archives Division of the National Air and Space Museum

Vintage Aircraft Tool Cataloging, Re-housing and Preservation Project

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In the years following WWII the United States and her Allies conducted engineering and flight tests of many different types of captured or surrendered Axis aircraft, primarily from Germany and Japan. Many of these aircraft were acquired by Allied and US technical intelligence collection teams.  It was ordered that at least one of each type of enemy aircraft be captured and evaluated by these teams, and that each aircraft type be maintained in flyable condition for a minimum of one year. To make this possible all technical data and support materiel available (such as tool kits, parts, etc.) had to also be captured to meet this requirement.

fuselage

Fuselage of a captured German WWII FockeWulf Ta-152H-0 advanced fighter, currently stored at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility. This aircraft was surrendered to an RAF intelligence team and later transferred to the US for evaluation.

Several of these captured aircraft were donated to the National Air and Space Museum upon completion of US Air Force testing in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and much of the supporting parts and tools came along with them. At the time loose tools and toolkits were not seen as accessionable objects, merely as tools to be used for repair and possible future restoration purposes. They remained in storage for years. Today this collection of tools contains some of the very last examples of their kind to be found anywhere in the world. It is due to the historically important and unique nature of these objects that a Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF) has enabled a project to catalog, re-house, and preserve these irreplaceable examples of tools and kits.

tools

One of several large crates filled with hundreds of loose tools of various types. Sorting these loose tools and beginning a comprehensive identification and inventory process has been the first priority of the 2010 CCPF Vintage Aircraft Tool project.

The  project began in July of 2010. The cataloging, condition assessment, and digital photography of this varied and unique collection was begun immediately so that a comprehensive inventory of this diverse collection could be created.

tools

Examples of sorted and inventoried tools. Upon identification it was discovered that these tools were highly specialized and potentially one-of-a-kind examples. The left tool was designed to cool large bearings with a cryogenic liquid to aid their removal during overhaul of a BMW 801 engine, like the one used to power the Focke Wulf FW-190. The right tool was designed to be used on the cylinder heads of several different types of Daimler-Benz engines, such as those used to power the He-219 Night Fighter currently being restored at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility.

One goal of the project is to create a curatorial and collections guideline for the proper and safe use of these tools, ensuring they remain in an accessible yet preserved condition. To ensure future access to restoration specialists and researchers, a series of protective storage cabinets will provide adequate space that maximizes accessibility yet minimizes unnecessary handling. This system of storage will also allow for easier transportation of the collection to the new Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

Additionally, it is necessary to prepare most of these tools for long-term, stable storage via thorough cleaning to remove old, soiled, or failing preservative coatings and service-related grime, and also treating areas of active surface corrosion. Once cleaned and treated each tool will then have a modern preservative coating reapplied, ensuring long-term stabilization and usability.

engines

Both engines above are from the He-219 Night Fighter being restored at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility. The left engine has already undergone restoration at the time this image was taken, while the right engine has yet to be restored. Being able to use or copy examples of purpose-built tools is important to restorers. If these necessary and unique tools are misplaced, damaged beyond usability or disappear, restoration is seriously hindered.

Copies of these tools have been made in the past to perform vital restoration work on some of the associated captured aircraft, and in some instances the tools themselves have been used. But once they are lost, then any similar restoration or stabilization work will be made much more difficult, if not impossible. This project will help ensure that these important objects are preserved.

Ray Barnett is a contractor working with the collections division of the National Air and Space Museum.

Thirtieth Anniversary – First Public Demonstration Of Solar-Powered Gossamer Penguin

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On August 7, 1980, 30 years ago today, Janice Brown flew the solar-powered Gossamer Penguin in full view of a crowd gathered on the Edwards dry lakebed at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in California. Janice flew the Penguin almost 3.5 km (two miles) that day in 14 minutes, 21 seconds. This was the first sustained flight of a solar-powered aircraft and the longest Penguin flight since development had started on the aircraft two years earlier. However it was not the first flight on solar power alone. Two months earlier, Penguin designer Paul MacCready’s 13-year-old son, Marshall, had made the first solar-powered flight, a short one of about 152 m (500 ft.), on May 18, 1980.

Prior to Marshall’s flight, the Penguin had flown with an on-board battery pack to augment the power provided by the solar cells. This 1979 photo shows Janice flying the Penguin using a combination of solar and battery power:

Gossamer Penguin

Gossamer Penguin in flight on Rogers Dry Lakebed

A team led by Paul MacCready had built the Penguin to back up the MacCready Gossamer Albatross, which became the first human-powered aircraft to fly across the English Channel in 1979. The Albatross is displayed at the National Air and Space Museum’s National Mall building.

Gossamer Albatross

On June 12, 1979, the Gossamer Albatross, with Bryan Allen as pilot, became the first human-powered aircraft to fly across the English Channel.

The Penguin spanned 22 m (71 ft.) and weighed 31 kg (68 lbs.) without a pilot. A 3,920-cell solar panel that could be tilted toward the sun produced 541 watts to drive an electric motor called the Astro Cobalt 40, built by AstroFlight Inc. A good account about developing the Penguin’s power system can be found here.

The Penguin was so fragile and difficult to control, that flight was limited to the calmest conditions found just after dawn. Unfortunately, the low angle of the morning sun limited the amount of energy falling on the flat wing surface. The development team had to mount the solar cells upright on a tilting panel to keep the cells perpendicular to the sun. The Penguin’s airframe was fragile to keep it lightweight; building the airplane stronger would have made it incapable of flight. The single electric motor could propel only so much weight into the air, and only small pilots could fly the Penguin, which weighed 31 kg (68 lbs.). Janice weighed about 45 kg (100 lbs.) and Marshall just 36 kg (80 lbs.).

The Penguin represented a milestone that encouraged others to continue working to increase the structural and aerodynamic efficiency of solar powered aircraft, along with the development of better power systems including lighter weight and more powerful batteries that might one day store the energy from solar cells to enable aircraft to fly even at night. Earlier this year, a workshop on electric propulsion sponsored by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation showed how far we have come in the 30 years since Janice flew the Penguin.

The future looks very promising. NASA aerospace engineer Mark Moore said last January that “many researchers are proposing a tripling of current battery energy densities in the next five to seven years,” which could lead to small electric-powered airplanes with ranges of 240 to 320 km (150 to 200 miles). Anticipating these improvements, NASA has begun to develop an exciting new concept for an electric aircraft called the Puffin. Please see Scientific American and Alternative Energy News for more information.

Russ Lee is a curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum.

The Saga of Lunar Landscape

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For more than a decade it has been my privilege, among my other duties, to serve as curator of the National Air and Space Museum art collection. It comes as a surprise to many folks to realize that the Museum has an art collection. In fact, it includes over 4,700 works by artists with names like Daumier, Goya, Rauschenberg, Rockwell and Wyeth, and is perhaps the finest and best-rounded collection of aerospace-themed art held by any of the world’s museums. People who are aware that I manage the Museum’s art treasures occasionally ask if I have a favorite work in the collection, I do.

“Lunar Landscape” by Chesley Bonestell. Reproduced courtesy of Private Collection

Chesley Bonestell’s mural, Lunar Landscape, was unveiled at the Boston Science Museum’s Hayden Planetarium on March 28, 1957. “No spaceship reservations are needed for a startlingly realistic visit to the Moon” announced a museum press release.  Measuring forty feet long by ten feet tall, the dramatic panorama of the lunar surface was the masterwork of an artist who had done more than his fair share to set the stage for the coming of the Space Age.

Born in 1888, Chesley Bonestell grew up on San Francisco’s Nob Hill, and survived the 1906 earthquake to emerge as a leading American architectural designer. Having left his artistic fingerprints on some of the best known structures of the era, including the façade of the Chrysler Building, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Golden Gate Bridge, he moved on to Hollywood, where his matte paintings provided the stunning backgrounds for such films as, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), and The Magnificent Ambersons. (1942).

Chesley Bonestell. Portrait by Ansel Adams, Gift of Pip and Frederick C. Durant, III

Always fascinated by astronomy, Bonestell began combining the best available science with his own artistry to produce paintings of the surface of other worlds. Life magazine published a spread of the artist’s extraterrestrial scenes in its issue of May 29, 1944. The editors of Mechanix Illustrated introduced their readers to Bonestell’s notion of a “Moon Rocket” in September 1945. In 1949, he collaborated with writer Willy Ley to produce the beautifully illustrated book, Conquest of Space. The next year, Bonestell teamed with producer George Pal and science fiction writer Robert Heinlein to create a classic space flight film, Destination Moon (1950). The artist contributed illustrations to a series of eight Colliers magazine articles on space flight that began to appear in the spring of 1952, and to the books describing flights to the Moon and Mars that spun out of the magazine series. A generation of youngsters, myself among them, nursed dreams of interplanetary travel inspired by Chesley Bonestell’s dramatic visions of other worlds.

Bonestell was at the peak of his powers in 1956, when the Boston Museum of Science commissioned Lunar Landscape, a work on canvas that would take up an entire wall near the planetarium. As in the case of all of his paintings, the artist planned the mural in meticulous detail. He positioned the viewer on a spot 1300 feet up the south wall of an imaginary lunar crater (“similar to Albateguius, but smaller”), located seven degrees from the Moon’s North Pole and five degrees to the left of the center of the lunar disc. He went so far as to specify that it was 3 o’clock, Boston time, on a late June afternoon, and calculated the position of the planets and stars accordingly (Jupiter over the central peaks, Antares below and to the right of the Earth).

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