in the Pima Air Museum

...I found my destiny.

Well, nothing that corny, really. But I did get to fondle some of my favorite airplanes.

This is the entry I've been waiting for. Cowboy shooting, Apache hideouts, and coatimundis are all well and good, but in my book, vintage warbirds take the cake. Writing about this also gives me the chance to unload a great many gorgeous pictures on you poor suckers my lovely readers, too. So here we go.

After rising early yet again, and packing up the Hummer, and returning the bedding to Uncle Bob and Aunt Barb's trailer, and bidding them a warm goodbye, we got back on I-10 and headed back west. Forty miles later we were rolling into Tuscon. Neither Dad nor I forgot that we were going to the Pima Air Museum; we just neglected to keep a sharp eye out for the sign. So we missed the exit. A long detour and quite a few expletives later, we were pulling into the museum parking lot. Though the day was warm by my standards (probably in the high 60s), a vicious wind had leaped up. Fortunately I had my brand-new Tombstone hoodie on.
Admission was steep—$15.50 per person—but as soon as we'd stepped through the next set of doors and onto the gallery floor, I knew it was worth it. You should've seen the double-take I did when I saw this baby.
Waitaminnit, by brain said, tripping over itself, yanking open file cabinets and rifling through desk drawers. A Curtiss O-52 Owl? How long have those been around? I haven't got any documentation on 'em! This is the first I've heard of it!

It was a scout plane, one of the largest reconnaissance designs ever accepted by the Army Air Corps, developed in 1939. It had a .50-caliber machine gun in the back to help ward off fighters, but that was the last resort. This thing was no dogfighter. The Owl was mainly good for droning around all innocent-like and sneaking peeks at the enemy. I knew I was in for some good stuff now. I hadn't taken ten steps into this museum and already I'd bumped into a plane whose mere existence I hadn't even begun to suspect when I woke up that morning. Bubbling with anticipation, I pushed on. Say hello to my little friend! This is the Starr Bumble Bee, the absolute ding-dang smallest airplane ever thunk up. Its wingspan is a meager six feet six inches, and its range is just 20 miles. But it did what it was intended to do: break records. This thing is down in the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest biplane ever built. (A year or so after Mr. Starr built it, somebody went and built a monoplane that was even smaller. I'd love to know how that thing stayed up.)

We saw Learjets...
...and autogyros...
...even a Hoppicopter (behind the autogryo in the previous photo)!
Now yer talkin'. Flying boats!
I love these things. Airplanes that can land on water. How cool is that?

This one here is a Grumman Widgeon. Grumman had a thing for naming its products after animals. Its line of propeller-driven fighter planes were all named after cats: Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, etc. Its seaplanes were all named after (what else?) waterfowl. There's the Widgeon, the Mallard, the Goose, and finally, the coolest one of them all, the almighty, one-and-only, never-to-be-outdone Albatross.

Widgeons were widely used. One of them scored the very first Coast Guard submarine kill of World War II. Another was employed by an Arab king as his personal transport. Not a bad reference list for a little plane like this, eh? (Can you read the name on the side? Petulant Porpoise? Ha!)

Or how about this big boy, a Martin Mariner?
Not as handsome as the Consolidated Catalina, and not as sleek as the Dornier 111, but this mother got the job done: submarine hunting, reconnaissance, search-and-rescue, even nocturnal ship-sinking.
I want one of these. Badly. Oh, the things I could do with it. Imagine sitting up there in the cockpit, glass panels all around, high above the water, coasting along at a ridiculous speed, the hold full of something exotic and exciting, the gigantic bulk just lifting clear of the water, sun sparkling on the spray, those huge piston engines roaring, me in my leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, with a three-day beard and a fiendish grin, happy as a pig in you-know-what.

There's only one problem with that delicious daydream. This is the only surviving Mariner. The only one. The rest of them have all been destroyed, or scrapped, or have pieces missing. There is one other complete Mariner, but it's currently upside-down at the bottom of Lake Washington. It crashed there 50 years ago and, after several unsuccessful salvage attempts, it is now used as a training site for divers. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

I was learning fast that the Pima Air & Space Museum is a veritable treasure trove of aviation history. Some of the rarest planes were there. A lot of them can't be found anywhere else in the entire world. It was easily the largest air museum I'd ever been in. Suddenly I understood why. I mean, what other air museum has both a B-18 and an SR-71, huh? I ask you, what other museum?
And if I thought the inside was sick, I was whistlin' Dixie. The outside was even better.
Recognize this plane? If you don't, don't worry. I didn't either. Most people who aren't retired Air Force probably wouldn't. This is a Boeing YC-14. It was conceived and constructed during the 1970s, and was intended to replace the C-130 Hercules. But it never caught on. It wasn't even mass-produced. The project got shut down. Weird plane, isn't it? You can see one of the two huge engine nacelles in the photo. Instead of four ordinary-size jet engines, the YC-14 apparently had two humongous big ones. Wikipedia says they were General Electric CF6-50D turbofans, each of which developed 51,000 pounds of thrust each. Whew, that's a quite a bit of thrust. (That's what she said.)
Those big engines make sense, though. The YC-14 was developed as an STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) aircraft. Big engines meant it could take off and land in tight quarters. Helpful thing for a cargo plane that needs to deliver its goodies and get out in a hurry. Only two of these things now remain. And I got a shot of one of them. Go me.

I didn't notice the YC-14 at first, though. The real reason I turned in its direction was that this little honey was parked across from it.
This is a Fairchild C-119 Boxcar. The paint job's a bit faded and the plane's a bit beat-up, but you still might recognize it. One of these was used in the recent remake of the Jimmy Stewart film, Flight of the Phoenix. (The only reason I went to see that movie—and later bought it—was because it had a C-119 in it. The movie turned out to be marginally good, though.)

I like these things even more than Mariners, if possible. There are still lots of 'em around, for one thing. Many are doing duty for small airlines and businesses, I hear. They're even (now imagine how this excites my fancy) being used to ship goods into the Alaskan bush, according to rumor. Long story short, my fantasy of owning one (and using it to pursue my international cargo business idea) isn't a pipe dream. Wouldn't say no to a C-123 Provider, either. One of these was used in the film Con Air.
Now, this next one really threw me for a loop. I hadn't realized, as I stood in the museum, that I was looking at the last intact Martin Mariner on the planet. The placard in front of the YC-14 told me that there were only two left. But I didn't need any help to know that to actually see an Avro Shackleton in the flesh was a very rare thing indeed.
 A postwar British maritime patrol bomber, the Shackleton was unique in having engines with two propellers each. (You can sort of see that in the photo I took, above, or in this next photo, borrowed from Wikimedia Commons. Those are two 20-millimeter cannons poking out of the nose, by the way.)
Each engine's propellers rotated in different directions, which helped to eliminate torque, but put aircrews at risk for high-tone deafness, or so I've read. 'Twas a rather awesome airplane to see in person or in photographs, I thought. Recognize this picture?
It's just like the one I used to have up at the top of this blog. It's a different airplane, but the same make and model, and taken from the same angle. Those are the engines of a Lockheed Constellation. And here's the Connie itself.
Beautiful plane, isn't it? With that graceful convex fuselage, it reminds me of a great silver swan. These Constellations (under the designation C-69) were used in World War II as heavy transports. General MacArthur used a C-121, named Bataan, as his personal aerial command vehicle during the Korean War...check it out.
After the war many found service in airlines, like this one, formerly of TWA. By the bye, these Constellations are a lot bigger than they look. They're so slender that they belie their true size. My head didn't even come up to the belly of the plane, and wouldn't have even if I had stood on tip-toe beneath it.

We wandered on, past the delightfully evil-looking WWII-Vietnam attack plane, the Douglas B-26 Invader... ...the surprisingly skinny Grumman F7F Tigercat...
...and the perfectly wacky heavy lifter, the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane.
If you haven't guessed by now, the outdoor portion of this museum was massive. Acre after acre we traversed, never seeming to find the end of the maze. Entire squadrons of airplanes were parked in the dust, reflecting the sun in their faded glory. If I'd had some mechanics and a few good pirates with me, I could've started a war. I was wandering down one wide lane, idly snapping some pictures of a C-82 Packet, when on a whim I glanced right.

And then I saw it. My guts promptly evaporated. My eyeballs froze. My heart stumbled like a man treading on marbles. It was an Albatross. A Grumman Albatross. My very favorite airplane of any kind, ever. Right there. Parked not 100 yards from me. Before my very eyes.
As though in a trance, I waded over to the big silver bird. Lord, it was beautiful.
I'd never seen one in person, let alone this close. I didn't even touch it at first, but simply devoured it with my eyes. It was better than I could've ever dreamed: big, but not awkwardly so; chunky, but not fat or ungainly-looking; out of commission, but still proud. Oh, how I wanted one. With that plane alone, I thought, I could do great things. Hell, I could die a happy man only having had the satisfaction of flying it, even just once. If I ever actually acquired one, and rigged it out with a cargo hold, and weather radar, and secret smuggling compartments, and gun cabinets, and a wet bar, and a concealed missile launcher in the tail...well, I think I might die of happiness.
Needless to say, this was one of the very few aircraft I chose to get a picture with. I didn't want to bother Dad too much. He'd had a bad toothache all day. He was even quieter than normal, but heroically trooped about the dusty grounds with me, observing machines and making pertinent commentary.

And so we meandered on, past a menagerie of ever-increasing wonderfulness and rarity. A B-50 Superfortress, modified for air tanker duty...
...a Guppy heavy-lifter, formerly in the employ of NASA...
...and even this, the jewel of the museum's collection, a Convair B-36 Peacemaker!

It was the largest bomber of any type or nationality ever built. The thing was ginormous.

Everything about it was awe-inspiring, even the power plant. Here, take a look at the wing:

You're seeing that correctly: six rearward-facing propeller engines and two jet engines. And that's just one wing. That's enough to make my little 150-horsepower Cessna froth at the mouth with engine envy.
The Peacemaker was 162 feet long, with a 230-foot wingspan. Designed specifically to carry nukes, they were part of America's insurance plan against Russian aggression. They sent a subtle message to the Reds, something to the tune of "Hey man, don't you mess with us, or we'll send a gigantic-ass airplane with six propellers and four jet engines over there and nuke your shit." And the Peacemaker worked darn well in that capacity. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we?

One quick stroll down a long aisle of fighter jets, back through the museum doors, and we'd met Mom and Harlan in the gift shop. (They weren't interested in standing outside in the wind and dust looking at derelict air superiority, unfortunately for them.) We pored over the whimsical gewgaws and knick-knacks, everything from airplane models to museum T-shirts to toddlers' bomber jackets to space food. Harlan got a freeze-dried ice cream sandwich and crunched noisily on it as we left the museum. I cradled my deck of warbird playing cards to my chest and thanked Mom heartily for stumping up.

Back into the Hummer we went, and spent the next six hours on the road for home, being treated to sights like these:
We passed acre after acre loaded with the infamous "jumping cholla" cacti. Dad just shook his head as we drove by. Dad loves cacti, but hates jumping chollas. In his own words, "they're the only cacti who actually come after you instead of staying put." And they do, too. A cholla's limbs can snap off very easily, leaving the ground near them littered with spiky booby-traps. And no matter how wide a berth you give a jumping cholla, it always seems to reach out and grab you nonetheless. The spines are hooked, making them difficult and painful to remove. They're just an all-around nasty specimen.

We pulled into the Coachella Valley just as the last blue-green glow drained from the evening sky. The lights of Indio, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, and La Quinta (plus the outlying districts, which Dad lumped together under the name of "East Jesus") were all on and glowing.

We got home about an hour and a half later, unloaded the car, had a snack, and went to bed, our minds whirling and our hearts content.