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Southern
Museum of Flight General Aviation News, June 3, 2005. By John P. Brackin Birmingham, Ala. The name may conjure up images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement or maybe Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and the state’s storied college football tradition. Or, maybe even notions of barbecued ribs and cornbread. And all of that would be right, but for pilots and aviation enthusiasts, there’s another image that need come to mind these days: the Southern Museum of Flight, Birmingham’s preeminent aviation museum and meeting place. Since 1965, the Southern Museum of Flight has been promoting Southern aviation to the state’s public in one incarnation or another. Originally created as the Birmingham Air and Space Museum by the Birmingham Aero Club (BAC), the museum held early exhibits at Samford University, known then as Howard College, before being moved to the Birmingham Municipal Airport several years later. In 1976, the BAC purchased a plot of land two blocks to the east to establish a permanent home for the museum, and in 1983, it opened the doors at its current location on 73rd Street North. Since that time, the
museum has undergone significant growth, with the addition of many new
planes, as well as an outdoor park and a Cold War-era bomb shelter,
which will one day be part of a major, Cold War exhibit currently in the
works. In addition to its planes and artifacts, however, the museum now
also features a broad range of aviation activities, such as plane
renovation and paper-airplane workshops for kids. It also serves as the
meeting place for several local aviation groups, including the BAC and
the Experimental Aircraft Association. The Southern Museum of Flight’s collection is divided into several, distinct sections, but present throughout is the theme of Southern aviation: A timeline of Birmingham airports lines the opening hallway. A tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen greets visitors at the ticket counter. A poster from the 1937 National Air Carnival adorns the entryway. Even Alabama’s Aviation Hall of Fame is located in the museum, in a second-story room lined with memorial plaques for each of its most legendary flyers, from pioneer Glenn Messer to astronaut Jan Davis.
Many of the museum’s aircraft are from seminal Southern events as well. The world’s first crop duster, the Huff-Daland, built in 1925, sits prominently in the Early Aviation Hangar. Not only was it the first true crop duster—complete with a tiny propeller on the wing, wired back to the pesticide bin to prevent “clumping”—but its freelance, passenger work led to the origin of Delta Air Lines. The shuttles began modestly with trips from Louisiana to Mississippi, then expanded later to include flights to Birmingham and Atlanta. The plane on display in Birmingham was renovated onsite and is one of only two like it in existence. On the modern end of the spectrum, the world’s first all-composite aircraft, the Mississippi State University Marvel, sits front-and-center in the General Aviation Hangar. The Marvel, an acronym for Mississippi Aerophysics Research Vehicle with Extended Latitude, was built for the Army in the 1960s by the school’s Raspet Flight Lab; it was designed as an observation plane with short take-off and landing parameters and was later adapted for desert flight in the Middle East. The Marvel was exhibited last summer at the Experimental Aircraft Association convention in Oshkosh, Wis., before being moved to Birmingham in September. The most interesting plane in the museum is perhaps the John Reynolds- constructed replica of the early Wright Flyer. Reynolds, of Atlanta, Ga., built the replica to commemorate the 100th anniversary of flight and has since loaned it to the museum on a permanent basis. It hangs majestically overhead in the Early Aviation Hangar, and despite the more modern addition of Phillips head screws, is a very accurate duplicate of the 1903 original. Its inclusion, by the
way, isn’t simply a nod to the history of flight but rather a very
appropriate acknowledgement of the time the Wright brothers spent in
Alabama. In addition to the their more well-known activities in North
Carolina, the two brothers spent several months in Montgomery, Ala.,
where they created the country’s first civilian flying school. Among
the school’s achievements was the nation’s first night flight—a
feat memorialized at the museum by a light from the runway—as well as
several improvements to the brothers’ aircraft. The site of the
school, incidentally, is now home to Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base.
Of course, there’s more to the museum than its emphasis on Southern aviation. The museum houses or displays over 80 aircraft in all, including a healthy collection of homebuilt planes and vintage, military aircraft. The recent Vietnam War exhibit, for example, featured several, Vietnam-era planes at the museum’s Outdoor Airpark, among them the sleek A-12 Blackbird and the F-100C Super Sabre. The museum also boasts three pedestal-mounted aircraft from the war, including an F-4N Phantom II and a recently-renovated UH-1 Huey helicopter. For the true enthusiast, the museum also offers an assortment of multimedia options, including an aviation library and a room with computerized flight simulators. The joy-stick controlled programs simulate the take off and flight of a Cessna 172, which could be of particular interest to actual Cessna pilots. The museum also features a movie theater which runs a short film depicting some of aviation’s lesser-known attempts at flight; one segment, for example, features a man strapped with homemade wings dropping like a rock from the side of a bridge. Whatever your age or your
level of interest, however, the Southern Museum of Flight has got
something for you. Admission is $3 for adults, $2 for seniors and
students, and free for children under 5. It’s open six days a week:
9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 4:30
p.m. on Sunday. The easiest way to find it is to simply take the Airport
Boulevard exit off Interstate 59 and then to follow the signs from
there. You’ll wind your way through a neighborhood, then pass the
Outdoor Airpark on your left. When you spot the Phantom, you’re there! To visit the museum
online, go to www.southernmuseumofflight.org. |
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