From the coast, I headed northeast to McMinnville and went to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.
This is where Howard Hughes gigantic flying boat - the Spruce Goose (also known as the H-4 or Hercules) - resides, dwarfing all other aircraft in its vicinity. The Spruce Goose was built and assembled between 1943 and 1947. It is the largest wood constructed and largest wingspan airplane ever built. Hughes built it to meet wartime troop and material transportation needs. It was powered by 8 Pratt and Whitney 3,000 hp engines (24,000 hp!!). The only flight it ever went on was 11/2/47 with Howard Hughes as pilot. It took off from the waters at the Long Beach Harbor, went one mile, and reached a altitude of 70 feet.
The size of the tail compared to a smaller airplane...
This is the 2nd oldest surviving Douglas DC-3. Named the Mainliner Reno, it was the first to be fitted with Pratt and Whitney supercharged engines.
The Curtiss-Wright A-22 (CW-A22) Falcon from 1938 is the first and only civilian Falcon ever made. The Lambert family from MO acquired this prototype. They were known for their involvement in aviation, and funded Charles Lindbergh's record flight to Paris in 1927.
"The City of Wichita", as this Ford 5-AT-B Tri-Motor from 1928 was called, flew often between San Diego and New York. In 1930 it carried 8 month old Douglas Charles - the youngest person ever flown.
This 1939 Beech D17A "Staggerwing" was the only one of 8 to serve in the war. Rumor has it that Winston Churchill flew in it after William Woods bought it in 1946 during Woods' Idaho fishing trip.
A World War II pilot once said (according to Ron Weil) that some of his most pleasant moments were spent during Primary Training. He would take his 1942 Stearman PT-17 out to a particular tree, late in the afternoon, and practice doing 360 degree turns around it. The object was to make perfect turns without being affected by the wind.
This Republic F-84F Thunderstreak from 1950 could go to an altitude of 44,450 feet and was the first single seat aircraft capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.
The North American 1955 FJ-3 Fury was developed after WWII and had 4 storage stations under the wings - 2 of which could carry 500 lb bombs or rocket packs, and the other 2 could carry 1000 lb bombs or launch rails for Sidewinder missiles.
Here are a couple of Pratt and Whitney engines...
Every aviation museum needs a torpedo thrower, and Evergreen has a 1945 "Turkey".
Here is a 1943 Warhawk.
And here we have a 1944 Lockheed P-38L Lightning. With four .50 caliper machine guns and a 20 mm cannon in its nose, it had enough firepower to sink a ship! It was also the Army's first 400 mph fighter, and shattered the transcontinental speed record in 1939 (the prototype) a few days after its first flight.
The P-38 Lightning were also responsible for the death of Admiral Yamamoto in 1943. Admiral Yamamoto was Japan's master strategist in naval warfare who engineered the Pearl Harbor attack on 12/7/41. The US Navy intercepted a message of when and where he would be flying, and took 16 P-38 Lightning planes to kill him. They intercepted the 2 bombers and Zero fighters that were escorting him, and the mission was a success.
This is a 1945 Supermarine Spitfire Mark XVI. It was delivered to Castle Bromwich, England. "In England and the United States, the handsome RAF pilot and his trusty Spitfire, touted as the guardian of the British Isles, appeared in newspapers, magazines and newsreels as a symbol of the struggle against Nazi Germany."
The Goodyear FG-1D 1945 Corsair is a carrier-based aircraft. Roughly equal in speed to the much feared Japanese Zero (the planes that tore into the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor), the Corsair was a heavy-gunned, armor-plated powerful "juggernaut" that could blast Japanese aircraft at a ratio of 11 to 1 and was known as the "Zero stopper".
"Truly a most successful and efficient beast," said Lloyd Jones of the 1944 Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat. Hellcat pilots could out run, out climb, and dive faster than the Japanese Zero, and could stay in position behind a Zero long enough to fire a devastating burst from its six .50 caliper machine guns.
This is a Douglas A-26C Invader.
In 1942, a select group of women, known as WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilots), were tasked with taking over some of their male counterparts military flying duties in combat. These tasks were often dangerous and included taking untested aircraft to the Army air fields, flight testing aircraft that were out of maintenance, and training novice pilots. 13 women flew heavy bombers and over 30 women died in the air. Despite the extreme conditions, the women were sent home without government or veteran's military benefits once there were enough men to take over.
The heavy bomber mentioned above is known as America's Queen of the Skies - the B-17 Flying Fortress, and was known for it's bombing raids in Germany.
It was also used to develop the Skyhook, a technique used to retrieve a man or equipment from the ground without landing. As it swooped down, it snagged a rope raised by a gas-filled balloon. Attached to the rope was a harness holding the person or equipment to be retrieved. A powered winch then retrieved the dangling person/item into the plane. The B-17 shown below demonstrated this technique in James Bond's 1964 movie "Thunderball".
Here is a Republic RC-3 Seabee. Having both land and sea operational capabilities, the Seabee provided its owners with many travel options and gave sportsmen access to fishing and hunting areas previously inaccessible.
Here are a few more...
"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
"God gave us the gift of life; we owe God our best performance." - Del Smith
"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." - JFK
After the aviation part of the museum, I walked over to the space museum, located on the other side of the parking lot.
The Mars Exploration Rovers were created to land and work on Mars, which is cold, has no liquid water, and has gigantic dust storms. To get to Mars, the rovers had to cross 300 million miles of space. Once there, they were driven by electric motors and went 1/10 a mile an hour (very slow). Their power came from solar panels that provide electricity to their batteries. They could climb slopes 30 degrees (similar to San Francisco's steep hills) and handle temps 40 below zero to 104 degrees. This is a replica of "Spirit".
In 1937, Nazi Germany opened a secret rocket development site on the Baltic Sea coast. The director was 26 year old Wernher von Braun, and he and others helped develop the fearsome V-2. When the British learned of this site, they bombed the facility, and the V-2 fell under the control of SS and Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler. Using slave labor, he built an underground production facility under horrendous conditions (with as many as 100 fatalities each day) to complete the V-2 (Vengeance) weapon.
The most forward section of a rocket, missile, or aircraft, is called a nose cone. The task of these was to survive the heat of reentering Earth's atmosphere. They were covered with a material called "ablative" that would melt upon entering Earth, and take the excess heat with it.
The R-7 is the rocket that propelled Vostok and Sputnik into space. It was the greatest advance in rocketry since the V-2 mentioned above. About 2 minutes after the R-7 would blast off, the 4 RD-107 engines shut down and fell away. The main engine continued firing until it, too, separated, allowing 2nd and 3rd stage engines to lift the payload into orbit.
Space suits. Cool! :-)
On 5/25/61, President JFK committed the US to "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth" before 1970. Through Project Gemini, NASA would test the ability of its astronauts to live in space, dock with other spacecraft in orbit, and make extravehicular activities. On 3/23/65, astronauts Grissom and Young made the first of 9 flights in a Gemini capsule on top of a Titan II. Without this project, the Apollo lunar landings would not have been possible by JFK's deadline.
The Titan II ICBM carries a 9 megaton nuclear warhead - 600 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped onto Hiroshima. The missile was designed to lift off into space, travel 6300 miles at 15,000 mph, and hit a target within 900 yards dead center. The entire process would only take 35 minutes! The warhead is housed in a nose cone similar to this one, called the Mark IV reentry vehicle.
Earlier I talked about von Braun and the V-2. Transferring him and his scientists to the US became known as "Project Paperclip". At first they moved to Fort Bliss, TX to work on ballistic missiles for the Army. Then, the Germans moved to the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, where they built the Redstone and Jupiter missiles. The Redstone missile was retired in October 1964 after completing 27 successful missile test launches and 5 journeys into space.
This is a Skylab airlock module, built for training. Astronauts practiced in it before heading to the space station.
This is an M-1 engine injector, that supplied the proper mix of liquid O2 and liquid hydrogen to fuel the engine. This would produce 1.5 million lbs of thrust (and was designed to produce up to 2 million)!!!
On 11/17/70, an unmanned Soviet spacecraft named Luna 17 landed on the moon. It carried an 8 wheeled lunar rover called the Lunokhod 1. This was the first remote-controlled robot rovers to land on another world!
This shows another moon suit. The suits had to protect the astronauts from the moon's harsh conditions, allow them to work and move, and keep them alive in an airless environment. You can see they had a backpack portable life support system, which provided O2 for breathing, suit pressurization, and ventilation for moonwalks lasting up to 7 hrs. The outer protective layer protected against the constant micrometeoroids, and rubber joints at the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees for more flexibility than previous suits.
On 7/29/69, Apollo 11's lunar module (Eagle) disengaged from the command module 50,000 ft above and fell to the moon, hurtling over the surface at 3500 mph. Eagle featured the world's first rocket throttle, allowing it to descend at different speeds (even hovering). Neil Armstrong let the Eagle get below 200 ft, but discovered the landing site was too rough. Fuel was dangerously low, but he kept going. When he finally found a smooth spot to land and made contact, he only had 20 seconds of fuel left. Buzz Aldrin was on that flight as well.
This is a moon buggy, which looks like a lot of fun! Although the top speed was only 8 mph, any time the buggy hit a bump, it went airborne. :-)
The Saturn V is at the Kennedy Space Center. I thought one of the large horizontal rockets was it, but Ralphie corrected me. Once he told me about how big it was, I remember seeing it almost 10 years ago with John on my first trip to FL. Big is no where near an adequate term to describe that thing!
The Saturn V has 3 stages. The first was built in Louisiana, and the other 2 in California. The only way the first 2 stages could be moved to the Kennedy Space Center was by barge. The Vehicle Assembly Building was where the 3 parts were assembled, and is the largest one story building in the world. It was actually constructed on the launch pad in that building. It was 363 feet tall, 33 feet diameter, and weighed 6 million lbs. The first stage alone was 1/2 a football field long! The rocket carried 1 million gallons of fuel! Once assembled, it was moved at 1 mph on a huge crawler.
This is a J-2 engine, that powered the 2nd and 3rd stages of Saturn V.
The space museum also had a variety of helicopters.
This is a Lockheed F-104G Starfighter, nicknamed "Missile with a man in it". It was one of the most innovative and radical designs of its time and was optimized for supersonic flight (Mach 1.4). Max speed is 1328 mph and it could go 50,000 ft up. World records were broken using other Lockheed 104s, reaching over 100,000 ft altitude!
Unofficially known as the Blackbird, the SR-71 is the world's fasted and highest "air breathing" aircraft. It went 2193 mph (Mach 3)!!!!!! It also says that it broke the world altitude record in 1976 by going 85,068 feet. Since this is a contradiction to the previously much higher altitude record broken in '58, Ralphie and I looked this up and the record is for sustained flight, meaning the Blackbird was able to sustain this altitude rather than just going up and down.
It was built to sustain high altitudes and speeds. The Blackbird is very thin, and rather than a tail, it had 2 rudders mounted to the tops of the engines. The fuselage also made it difficult to detect by radar. The turbine engine system used moveable spikes to break up the intake air in order to ensure it was moving at supersonic speeds when it entered the engines. It can be refueled in the air or on the ground, had a drag chute for landing, and was a spy plane that could scan more than 100,000 miles each hour.
In 1967, a Phantom II like this was on the USS Forrestal preparing for battle. While warming it up, an electrical problem accidentally launched a 5" diameter rocket. The rocket slammed into a Skyhawk and split the 400 gallon drop tank. It exploded, sending shrapnel and burning fuel across the deck. Fire crews raced over to put out the fire and to free pilots still strapped into their planes. During this time, the first of several 1000 lb bombs carried by the Skyhawks detonated due to the heat. It blew men and aircraft in all directions and tore a hole in the armored flight deck, allowing burning jet fuel to pour into the compartments below. For hours, they fought to save the ship. 137 sailors were killed and another 64 injured. 21 aircraft were destroyed.
In October 1958, the month NASA was born, a spaceplane was completed called the X-15. It would be capable of flying more than 60 MILES high at a speed > Mach 6 (4500 mph or 6 times the speed of sound). It would be launched from a ship, but unlike others, it could be controlled (throttling up or down). In 1963 it took a pilot to the edge of space (328,000 ft or 62 miles is considered space and he went 354,200 ft or 67 miles)! He was designated an astronaut and preceded Gus Grissom by 1 1/2 years! (Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon and Joe Eagle went on to fly the Space Shuttle)
This is a huge telescope used to track artificial Earth satellites. Mounting the 3 1/2 ton telescope allowed it to move through 3 axes to track any direction across the sky. It's first task, in 1957, was to track Sputnik.
This is one of eight H-1 engines used on the first stage of the Saturn 1B. These engines lifted the rocket off of the ground. It used liquid O2 and RP-1. Oxygen and hydrogen gasses weighed so much, their large, heavy fuel tanks would actually weigh down the rockets. Instead, by cooling the fuel to at least -240 degrees, the gasses become liquid, requiring smaller, lighter fuel tanks.
This is one of two Atlas booster engines that straddled Atlas' main "sustainer" engine. Each produced 154,000 lbs of thrust.
In 1965, Ed White opened the hatch on Gemini IV and walked into space. A hose that looked like an umbilical cord passed O2 to his suit and kept him tethered to the spacecraft. He carried a portable thruster that shot small bursts of O2 used to propel him into space. He had so much fun that he said returning to the spacecraft was "the saddest moment of my life."
These men were the first American astronauts, also known as the "Mercury 7", and were considered heroes long before they ever went into space. They got to name their own spacecraft and all ended with the number "7". For instance... Shepard's "Freedom 7" suborbital flight put the first American in space. Grissom flew a successful second suborbital flight, "Liberty Bell 7", but his spacecraft sank shortly after splashdown. Glenn's "Friendship 7" placed the first American into orbit. He circled Earth 3 times.
Only top military test pilots were considered for Mercury. 110 were judged qualified to undergo the testing, but only 7 were chosen.
The First Flight
"The first flight with a rocket using liquid propellant was made yesterday at Aunt Eppie's farm in Auburn... It looked almost magical as it rose, without any appreciably greater noise or flame, as if it said, 'I've been here long enough; I think I'll be going somewhere somewhere else, if you don't mind.'" - Robert Goddard's Diary (3/17/26 - first )
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