Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2020 i Air & Space

NASA’s Discovery Program, which supports solar system exploration, recently selected four proposals to develop into concept studies, an important step in choosing future missions. Scientists from our own Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) are working on three of those four potential missions—DAVINCI+, VERITAS, and Trident—a reminder that our Museum doesn’t only commemorate the history of space exploration, it also plays a significant role in the ongoing study of our solar system. BOLD IDEAS, EVEN IF NEVER REALIZED, CHALLENGE AND CHANGE US IN THE BEST WAYS. I could not be prouder of the CEPS scientists who have seen their proposals through to this exciting stage of development. (You can read more about CEPS on page 18.) I hope they are each able to enjoy the sublime experience (for planetary…

On March 29, for the first time, American F-35 fighters participated in a joint training drill in the skies above Israel, the first country outside the United States to operate the F-35 and the first to fly it in combat. Israel has purchased 50 airplanes. The one-day exercise, dubbed “Enduring Lightning,” brought together F-35A Lightning II aircraft from the U.S. Air Force 34th Fighter Squadron and F-35I aircraft from the Israeli Air Force 140 Golden Eagle Squadron. The 34th is part of the 388th Fighter Wing stationed at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, which was the first U.S. base to receive the F-35A, in 2015. Last December, the Wing took final delivery of its full complement of 78. The F-35s, flying in two formations of four, practiced air-to-air combat,…

ABOUT THE TIME BRUCE CAMPBELL was finishing graduate school, NASA’s Magellan mission arrived at Venus and started making the first global map of the alien world using synthetic aperture radar to penetrate the planet’s dense atmosphere. “The biggest draw was being able to look through the atmosphere,” says Campbell. “In a photograph, all you see is the golden color. But with the radar system, you can look right through the clouds and reveal the mysteries.” By the time Campbell joined the National Air and Space Museum’s Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) as a research scientist in 1992, Magellan had returned radar images of 98 percent of the Venusian surface. “My first Museum exhibit project was to update the Venus section of the Exploring the Planets gallery,” he says.…

CRUISE GOOGLE EARTH over the piney woods of North Carolina around the tiny community of Moncure, and if you’re lucky, you will fly over an astonishing sight: a silvery Japanese fighter, big red meatballs atop its wings, half hidden under trees in a ramshackle backyard. If you’re really sharp, you might recognize it as a Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa, code-named Oscar. The Oscar was often called “the army Zero,” and a very effective World War II fighter it was. But how did this one get to rural North Carolina, since only about a half dozen Oscars are known to exist, all in museums or under restoration? You’ll have to ask Zeb Harrington, who in fact is building the backwoods version. Building it out of welded electrical tubing, pizza pans, kitchen mixing…

When General George Kenney assumed command of the Fifth Air Force in July 1942, he inherited, as he would later write, “a hell of a mess.” In the southwest Pacific Theater, working aircraft—and parts and fuel—were hard to come by. The Fifth’s primary pursuit plane, the Bell P-39 Airacobra, was no match for the Japanese Zero. Fortunately, Kenney knew that a solution to his problem would soon arrive: the Lockheed P-38 Lightning. To boost morale, Kenney had World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker—who was in the southwest Pacific at the request of the Secretary of War—give his men a pep talk. As Rickenbacker regaled them with tales of fighting von Richthofen’s Flying Circus in 1918, Kenney had an inspiration. He challenged the pilots of the Fifth Air Force to beat…

Road to Redemption Thank you for your article describing Captain Lyle Prouse’s journey from alcoholism to redemption. (“Recovery from a Deep Stall,” April/May 2020.) Many years ago I attended a conference where Captain Prouse was a speaker. When he got to the part of his story where he was once again allowed to fly 747s as a captain and retire with his dignity, the room became full of airline pilots looking at their shoes, trying desperately to hide their tears. Prouse is an inspiration for all pilots; his story is one where the kindness of others transformed a man’s life. RICHARD M. CUNNINGHAM via email That should have been [Captain Prouse’s] last flight. Whether his alcoholism was a disease or not, he flew a commercial flight under the influence of…

Why does someone who has achieved so much in aviation—in fact, been awarded the Order of the British Empire for those achievements—go back to basics in flight training? I worked for 49 and a half years, and I loved every minute of it. But it was a pretty full-time job. I had learned to fly back in 1989, and I love to fly. But I was a) a little rusty, and b) not getting any better because I had limited time. In the 12 months before I retired, I flew for like five hours, which is ridiculous. Soon after I retired, my wife and I went down to Florida, and I thought, “I’ll go down to [the] local airport, downtown St. Petersburg, and I’ll get myself a check ride on…

LATE ON THE NIGHT OF APRIL 24, 2015, 19-year-old Brayan Valle stood in a farm field half a mile north of the Mexico border near Calexico, California. When a drone launched in Mexico buzzed out of the darkness, Valle used a radio controller to command the commercial-grade, multirotor aircraft to drop a seven-pound bundle enclosed in bubble wrap. As Valle collected the bundle, the drone flew back to Mexico. In a process that took hours to complete, the Mexican drone returned three times to drop additional seven-pound bundles. With the fourth and final bundle stuffed inside a backpack, Valle walked up to Highway 98, where he flagged down his new friend, 18-year-old Jonathan Elias. Throwing the backpack into the trunk of Elias’ car, Valle hopped in the front seat and…

On a sunny day last November, Air Force One was parked inside a hangar 140 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. The large, four-engine transport had logged thousands of miles. Countless VIPs had flown aboard it. Speeches on the peaceful purpose of atomic power had been crafted inside its cabin, and presidential naps taken in its comfy berths. But this Air Force One was not waiting for the president. No, this airplane, a 72-year-old Lockheed VC-121 Constellation—the first presidential aircraft officially designated as Air Force One—was waiting for resurrection. Named Columbine II, the airplane was the personal transport of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who flew aboard it in the early 1950s. As could be expected, the aircraft is in need of a nose-to-tail overhaul. The driving force behind the ongoing restoration…

I WAS THE ONLY WOMAN in my Air Force undergraduate pilot training flight, and I was humiliated. I clenched my jaw, struggling to maintain military bearing. Fighting back tears, I saw horror in my instructor’s face at my emotional state as he tried to debrief me. The captain avoided my eyes and focused on the Dash-1 diagrams of the T-37 instrument panel, the Radio Magnetic Indicator (RMI), and the Instrument Flight Rules charts in between us. He continued describing the procedure for a Fix-to-Fix. When flying a Fix-to-Fix, you don’t fly directly over any navigational station. You define your current location by a given radial and mileage from a navigational station, and then you find your way to another such point in space without flying directly to or over the…

EVERY 26 MONTHS OR SO, when the planets are favorably aligned, spacecraft can be sent to Mars at a discount—in terms of the rocket fuel required. NASA, which has a lot of experience in this area, rarely misses the chance. U.S. spacecraft have been dispatched to Mars during six of the last eight biennial launch windows. This summer, two newcomers are ready to hop on the Mars train: China and the United Arab Emirates, the first Arab country to attempt a planetary mission. Meanwhile, NASA will up its game with the first half of a two-part campaign to collect Martian samples and return them to Earth. Another launch had been on the schedule, but the European/Russian Exomars mission was forced to miss this year’s window due to technical delays and,…

WHEN THE SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER LIFTED off on its 10th mission, on a Tuesday morning in January 1986, Holly Ridings watched the launch on TV, along with her sixth-grade classmates, in an Amarillo, Texas middle-school cafeteria. “We watched Challenger go up into the sky,” she says, “but we didn’t understand exactly what happened, that the Y-shaped smoke trail wasn’t right. But you could tell by the tone of the teachers’ conversations and their sad faces that something went wrong.” The accident changed her life. “My reaction, as I figured it out contextually over the next few days, was, Hey, I want to help solve that problem! ” At 12 years old, Ridings could already hear an inner engineer voice telling her that she was, in her words, “a fix-it person”…

WHILE WE WERE researching photographs for the excerpt from John Bruning’s book Race of Aces (p. 48), we came across Richard VanderMeulen’s stunning air-to-air shot of a pair of P-38 Lightnings and decided we had to show it off. That reminded us of the many powerful air-to-air photographs we’ve seen over the years from VanderMeulen, whose work has graced more than 100 magazine covers. “I have loved airplanes for as long as I can remember,” VanderMeulen says. “My parents took me to airshows as a kid, and I remember the excitement of taking pictures of airplanes with my dad’s camera, and the disappointment of seeing the tiny dot in the middle of the print when they were processed.” Those tiny dots in his photos would later grow into magnificent close-ups…

RADIO-CONTROLLED, GYRO-STABILIZED, and powered by an externally mounted, gasoline-powered pulsejet engine, which used a design similar to the German V-1 rocket to deliver 55 pounds of thrust, the “Katydid” was one of the most sophisticated UAVs of the mid- to late 1940s. Recognizable by its distinct V-tail, the 320-pound drone could be launched via an AT-1 catapult or released from the bomb rack of a PBY-4 Catalina, at which point gunners would attempt to draw a bead on it. Hitting the target wasn’t easy and wasn’t meant to be. With a wingspan of 12.5 feet, the Katydid could fly for up to 40 minutes at a top speed of 175 miles per hour. Whenever possible, salvage crews recovered the felled drone so it could be shot down again. McDonnell Aircraft…