Bella Bella visits the National Naval Aviation Museum

In my story about fishing the other day, I mentioned that the Alabama Point Bridge connects Alabama’s Pleasure Island to Perdido Key in Florida.

Well, Orange Beach really is that close to Alabama’s border with the state of Florida. In fact, one of the area’s most famous night-spots, the Flora-Bama Lounge, is just six feet east of the Alabama border.

The closest big airport to Orange Beach is also in Florida, in the city of Pensacola. Pensacola is called The Cradle of Naval Aviation, because the nearby community of Warrington is home to an historic military base. Naval Air Station Pensacola began as a U.S. navy shipyard (a place where ships are built or repaired) in the 1820s.

Almost as soon as airplanes were invented, people saw a good fit between the navy and aviation. The first-ever seaplane flew in 1910, while the first flat-topped aircraft carrier launched in 1918.

The harbour on Pensacola Bay became the United States’ first naval air station on the eve of World War I. It’s still a key training base for naval and Coast Guard pilots, and is the home of the Blue Angels – a crack demonstration team of F/A-18 Hornets. Since 1963, it’s also been the home of the National Museum of Naval Aviation.

I really enjoy learning about airplanes. One of the highlights of my trip to New Zealand last fall was visiting the historic Hood Aerodrome near the North Island town of Masterton.

 

During my recent visit to Orange Beach, you can bet that nothing would keep me out of Pensacola’s Naval Aviation Museum!

The Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s flight demonstration squadron, formed in 1946. My human buddy Suzanne has seen them perform at the Abbotsford Airshow over the years. 

The Blue Angels regularly practice at Pensacola on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with an autograph session in the Naval Aviation Museum on Wednesdays. While there was no practice the day I visited, I had a wonderful time exploring the museum.

I joined a tour led by an entertaining and very informative veteran named Ed Nugent.  Let me tell you about some of the aircraft I saw with him.

This is a replica of the A-1 Triad, the first airplane in the U.S. Navy:

Here’s a Sopwith Camel, with a big Snoopy at the controls:

In Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comics, Snoopy likes to pretend that his doghouse is one of these airplanes.

Mr. Nugent said that pilots’ silk neck-scarves were originally to wipe their goggles clean of castor oil from the aircraft engines.

This is a Fokker D.VII, a German fighter from World War I whose manoeuvrability made it excel in dogfights, or aerial fights between two airplanes:

The Hanriot HD.1 was a single-seat fighter built by France in World War I:

The Thomas-Morse S-4 Scout was a training plane first built in 1917, and nicknamed “Tommy”:

Here’s an amazing machine, the 1918 NC-4 Curtiss flying boat, with a 127-foot wingspan. It was the first plane to cross the Atlantic, in 1919, taking about three weeks with stops to rest and re-fuel:

Incidentally, the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic took place soon afterward, in June 1919, when John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew a Vickers Vimy IV biplane 3,040 kilometres from Newfoundland to Ireland. Charles Lindbergh (in case you’re wondering when I’d mention his historic flight) flew a Ryan monoplane solo 5,800 kilometres from New York to Paris in 1927.

This Boeing F4B-4 from the 1920s and 30s was preserved because it was buried as trash by Boeing, covered by a parking lot for fifty years, and forgotten until its accidental re-discovery and complete restoration:

Built in the 1920s and 30s, the F7C-1 Curtiss was a fighter biplane:

The N3N Canary was used to train pilots. It was the last biplane (an airplane with two wings) used by the U.S. military:

The top-hat on the side of this 1930s Curtiss F11C “Goshawk” shows that it was used by the “High-hatters,” a demo team:

This Beechcraft Model 17 “Staggerwing,” which first saw flight in 1932, bears a “goshawk” emblem, the symbol of Air Force Base Pensacola:

 
 
 
 

 

The Ryan NR-1 Recruit, first built in  1934, was used as a trainer:

Here’s another fine training aircraft used during World War II, the Curtiss-Wright SNC-1 “Falcon”:

Grrr! This is a Curtiss P-40 “Warhawk,” a fighter that first flew in 1938:

This Grumman F3F biplane has an amazing story. It was found deep in the Pacific Ocean by a submarine in 1988, where it had lain since 1940. Pulled up from the deep sea in 1990, it has been beautifully restored. The pilot who’d had to ditch the plane, Lieutenant Robert E. Gater, was a retired Brigadier General when he saw the plane salvaged fifty years later:

As an aside, the F3F shows how the U.S. was still using biplanes in the summer of 1940. Mr. Nugent told us that the Brewster F2A Buffalo was not a great plane, but it’s why the U.S. did not go into World War II using biplanes.

Grumman aircraft were named after cats because the F1F plane was nicknamed Fifi, a cat’s name. Mr. Nugent said that the Grumman F4F-3 “Wildcat,” a carrier-based fighter from World War II, was the best U.S. aircraft during the first three years of American involvement in World War II:

Here’s a Grumman F4F “Wildcat” with a paint-job marking it as coming from before 1942’s Battle of Midway:

Have you heard of the “Black Sheep Squadron” from World War II? Led by Major “Pappy” Boyington, Marine Fighter Squadron 214 and their F4U Corsairs became so famous that a 1970s TV show, Baa Baa Black Sheep, was based on their exploits:

This is a Mitsubishi A-6M “Zero,” a famous Japanese fighter plane from World War II:

This Soviet MiG-15 from the Korean War is the actual plane shot down by a pilot named Jesse Fulmer in 1950:

The McDonnell F3H-2M “Demon” flew off aircraft carriers during the 1950s and 60s:

A Blue Angels A-4 “Skyhawk”:

The Museum’s collection goes right up to the Space Age. Skylab was a space station orbited by the United States between 1973 and 1979. This is the 1973 Skylab 2 command module:

I flew home from Pensacola the following day on a beautiful and comfortable commercial jet … but my heart was with the historic aircraft at the National Museum of Naval Aviation. Next Monday, May 28^th is the U.S. holiday called Memorial Day, when Americans honour the men and women who have served in their armed forces.

Story © S. Clouthier

Photo of Blue Angels in flight courtesy Dirk Hansen/Wikipedia

Other photos © S. Clouthier