[Clipping: Aviation annex reaches for the sky] Part: 1 of 2
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4J Sunday, January 11, 2004 THE TENNESSEAN www.tennessean.com
AVEL:,HISTORY
Aviation annex reaches for the skyBy MICHAEL KILIAN
Knight Ridder News Service
CHANTILLY, Va. - Imagine
if you can, more than 80 aircraft -
including the wide-winged Lock-
heed SR-71 spy plane, the Concorde
Supersonic Transport, a Boeing 707
prototype and the B-29 Super-
fortress Enola Gay that dropped the
atomic bomb on Hiroshima - all in
a single room.
This would seem the wildest of
fantasies, but it became an amazing
factual reality last month, when the
Smithsonian Institution's National
Air and Space Museum opened its
new annex, the Steven F. Udvar-
Hazy Center, at Dulles Interna-
tional Airport.
The opening, on Dec. 15, was
timed to coincide with the cere-
monies at North Carolina's Kill
Devil Hills celebrating the 100th
anniversar of the Wright Brothers'
first flight Dec.17.
"Annex" is a meager word to use
in describing this gigantic aviation
museum, which makes the Air and
Space Museum's main building on
Washington's National Mall seem a
mere closet in comparison.
In fact, the Mall museum would
easily fit inside the Udvar-Hazy
Center, which has 760,000 square
feet of space, compared to the Mall
facility's 161,000 square feet.
More amazing, though fewer
than 100 airplanes were on view
opening day, eventually the
$311 million new annex will have
more than 200 on display, about
80% of the Air and Space
Museum's total collection. Eventu-
ally, the Udvar-Hazy Center also
will house 135 space artifacts,
including a capsule from the Mer-
cury program.
And you won't have to stand on
the main floor gawking upward at
suspended aircraft high above you.
Ramps and observation galleries up
to four stories high will allow visi-
tors to look at the hanging aircraft
close up. The suspended aircraft
will be positioned in various atti-
tudes of flight, with at least one aer-
obatic airplane shown in full verti-
cal ascent.
Attracting more than 9 million
visitors a year, the Air and Space
Museum's Mall building already is
the most popular museum in the
world. The new Dulles annex is
expected to add 3 million to 4 mil-
lion visitors to the total.
"Initially, there was a question
whether a museum that only dis-
played airplanes and technology
could be popular," said former
Marine Corps Gen. Jack Dailey,
director of the Air and Space
Museum since 2000. "But this is an
exciting place. People are in awe of
how we got here (in aerospace
development), and the stories are
of such significance in terms of
human capability."
It was obvious from the time that
the Mall facility opened in 1976 that
more space eventually would be
needed. The building had room to
showcase such attractions as the
Wright Brothers' first Flyer that
made history at Kitty Hawk in 1903
and The Spirit of St. Louis in which
Charles Lindbergh made the first
solo crossing of the Atlantic in 1927.
But only sections of large airplanes
could be exhibited.
Worse, the airplanes at the Mall
site amounted to only about 10% of
the museum's vast collection. The
rest, including the Enola Gay
Superfortress and some other truly
extraordinary aviation treasures,
were warehoused under less than
optimal conditions at the museum's
dismal Garber storage facility in the
Maryland suburbs.
Now, 90% of the total collectionN\ K
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- - - --- - - - - - -- - - KNv!CU I I rr IN -a N VICE
The new National Air and Space Museum annex - which resembles a
gigantic aircraft hangar - even has room for an Air France Concorde.will be on view at either the Mall or
Dulles location. The remaining 10%
will go out on loan to other aviation
museums nationwide.
The Wright Flyer, The Spirit of St.
Louis, Amelia Earhart's Lockheed,
aerobatic champion Patty
Wagstaff's Xtra and nearly all the
other aircraft on view at the Mall
building will remain there.
Most of those at the Udvar-Hazy
Center will be available to the pub-
lic for the first time.
At the Udvar-Hazy Center, the
entire, fully restored Enola Gay is
being exhibited, along with brief
descriptions of its atomic mission
and the aircraft's capabilities.
Other World War II aircraft fig-
ure largely in the new annex. The
B-17 Swoose there is the oldest Fly-
ing Fortress still in existence. One
of the 21 B-17s flown to Hawaii just
before the Japanese sneak attack on
Pearl Harbor, it is the only survivor
of the U.S. military aircraft that saw
combat on the first day of Amer-
ica's entry into World War II.
There's a jagged-tooth P-40
Warhawk, best known as the
fighter flown by the legendary Fly-ing Tigers in China and Burma at
the outset of the war, as well as a
Grumman F6F Navy Hellcat.
These nimble fighters shot down F
more than 5,000 Japanese airplanes
while losing only 270 of their own.
A World War II twin-engine and
twin-tailed P-38 Lightning also is on
view. Charles Lindbergh shot down
two Japanese planes with one of
these while serving as a civilian
technical adviser to our air forces in
the Pacific.
Representing World War I is a
French-made Caudron bomber,
used by all allied air forces in that
conflict, as well as a Curtiss JN-4D
Jenny, famous for going into pro-
duction so late that our military avi-
ators had to fly French and British
planes in combat.
Many Jennies were bought after
the war for ridiculously low prices
by barnstorming pilots who used
them for air shows.
A Korean War F-86 Sabre Jet is in
the collection, along with a Viet-
nam War-era F-4 Phantom jet.
The new facility has a 487-seat
IMAX movie theater; classrooms; a
museum shop and restaurants.If you go
The Smithsonian Institution's
National Air and Space Museum's
new annex, the Steven F. Udvar-
Hazy Center, is at Dulles Interna-
tional Airport in Virginia, about 28
miles northwest of Washington. It
is just west of the intersection of
U.S. Highways 28 and 50.
The center will operate the
same hours as the National Air
and Space Museum, 10 a.m.-
5:30 p.m. daily except Dec. 25.
As with the rest of the Smith-
sonian's facilities, there will be no
admission fee at the Udvar-Hazy
Center, though there will be a
charge for parking at the annex's
2,000 vehicle parking lot, as well
as for the large-screen movies
and such special attractions as
flight simulator rides.
For more information, consult
the museum Web site,
www.nasm.si.edu., or the Smith-
sonian at 1-202-357-2700.1.0
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Kilian, Michael. [Clipping: Aviation annex reaches for the sky], clipping, January 11, 2004; Nashville, Tennessee. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth870779/m1/1/: accessed June 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting National WASP WWII Museum.