The Smithsonian Institute has long displayed a selection of its most significant air and space craft at its National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall in Washington DC. The items on display however represented a tiny fraction of the full Smithsonian collection and for many years the remainder were stored in a variety of temporary locations, mainly around Washington Dulles Airport.
All that changed in 2003, when an awesome new facility at Washington Dulles opened to the public. Made possible by an extremely generous donation by Steven F. Udvar-Hazy, the facility which now bears his name is quite simply breathtaking.
Nicknamed “America’s Hangar”, the Udvar-Hazy Center contains a collection of around 300 aircraft, and has allowed the museum to at last display some of the larger aircraft in its collection, along with some of the more obscure and interesting types. The building itself is very impressive and features a “control tower”, offering views of the approach at the nearby airport.
The main part of the museum is the Boeing Aviation Hangar, which contains most of the aircraft on display. Off to the side the McDonnell Space Hangar is centred around the Space Shuttle Enterprise. It would be impossible to describe every single exhibit on display in the hangar, so I will just pick out as many of the highlights as I can.
Entrance to the museum is via an atrium at the centre of the building. This leads to a raised area offering great views of the museum’s Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. This aircraft served with the USAF for a total of 24 years, before making its final flight from Los Angeles to Washington on 6 Mar 1990 – setting a new record of 1 hour 4 mins and 20 seconds in the process.
Hanging above the Blackbird are two outstanding American fighters from the WWII period – the P-40E Kittyhawk and the Vought F4U-1D Corsair. The museum’s P-40E saw service with the RCAF during WWII, before passing through a number of owners on its way to the NASM. It is now restored in USAAF colours. The Corsair served with the US Navy during the war, but currently wears the markings of VMF-114, serving on the USS Essex in 1944.
Ramps to the left and right lead down to the hangar floor level. I made my way down to the right to start with – in that area are several aircraft from the Vietnam War, along with a few more modern types. These include a very smart Republic F-105D Thunderchief; in common with many others of the type, this aircraft is known to have served during the conflict in southeast Asia and served with the 421st Tactical Fighter Squadron, based in Thailand.
Also on display are other aircraft from that period, including a collection of naval aircraft: an RF-8G Crusader, F-4S Phantom, and A-6E Intruder. The Intruder was delivered as an A-6A, served initially over Vietnam and after upgrade to A-6E standard went on to see service during Operation Desert Storm.
Looking slightly out of place amongst this older technology is the first example of the Lockheed Martin X-35, the winner of the Joint Strike Fighter competition. The aircraft on display was built as an X-35A before being modified to test the STOVL concept. After a brief period of testing, the demonstrator was retired and transferred to the NASM.
Moving back in time to WWII, there is an outstanding selection of aircraft, many of which represent the sole survivors of their type. The array of German and Japanese aircraft from that period is truly exceptional.
The jewel in the Luftwaffe collection (in my opinion!) is the museum’s incredible Arado Ar234B Blitz bomber. This aircraft was the first jet bomber to enter service – albeit at a very late stage, too late to make any difference to the outcome of the war. The museum’s aircraft was surrendered to British forces at Sola airfield, near Stavanger, Norway and later shipped to the US on the aircraft carrier HMS Reaper. After test flying concluded, it was transferred to the NASM and stored for many years at the Paul E. Garber facility, before completion of the Udvar-Hazy Center allowed it to be placed on display.
Another extremely rare aircraft which shares a similar history with the Ar234 is the Heinkel He219 Uhu, an advanced German night-fighter which was produced as an answer to the RAF’s Mosquito, an aircraft which was dominating the night skies above Germany. At the moment only the fuselage of the He219 is displayed – hopefully the aircraft will be completed in due course.
The museum’s Dornier Do335 is also the sole survivor of its type. Another aircraft to travel to the US on board HMS Reaper after capture by Allied forces, this beast is truly massive, and perhaps represents the pinnacle of piston-engined aircraft design – its top speed of 846 km/h (474 mph) is the highest reached by such a machine.
Alongside these unique gems, the museum’s Focke Wulf Fw190 looks positively common! Common it is not of course, especially as it is a rare ground attack version, the Fw190F-8. The aircraft on display was built in 1943 as an Fw190A-7 fighter. After receiving damage on operations it was rebuilt as an F-8 fighter-bomber and served with SG2 on the Eastern Front. It is now restored in the SG2 markings it carried in 1944, markings which were uncovered during its restoration. Personally I think the aircraft looks wonderful, and would only look better if it could be joined by the NASM’s Focke Wulf Ta152, which is currently in storage!
As well as these WWII Luftwaffe gems, there are also some equally rare Japanese types on display. These include the unique Aichi M6A1 Seiran floatplane bomber. This is the last survivor of its type, which was designed to be operated from submarines in order to strike at naval and strategic land targets, the most ambitious of these being the lock gates of the Panama Canal, an operation which was ultimately cancelled due to the need to divert resources to attack the US Navy. The aircraft on display is the last aircraft built and the sole survivor of its type.
There are two more Japanese ‘sole survivors’ on display, both examples of nightfighers: the Nakajima J1N1-S Gekko and the Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu. The Gekko was the first Japanese aircraft designed as a nightfighter. It was produced for the Japanese Navy to protect bombers from Chinese nightfighters during bombing missions, but later went on to intercept USAAF B-29 Superfortress bombers, with limited success. The aircraft on display was captured at the end of the war and brought to the US for testing, along with three other Gekkos, all of which were later scrapped.
The Ki-45 was produced for the Japanese Army as a heavy fighter, broadly equivalent to aircraft such as the Messerschmitt Bf110. After a protracted development, the aircraft entered service with its armour and heavy armament proving useful for ground attack missions. It also saw some success as a nightfighter, the only such aircraft to be operated by the Imperial Japanese Army during WWII. Currently only the fuselage of the museum’s Ki-45 is on display, with conservation work consisting of carefully stripping back the layers of paint added over the years to reveal the original wartime colours.
Along with these captured enemy aircraft, there are of course plenty of Allied aircraft on display. The most famous of these is of course the museum’s Boeing B-29A Superfortress, Enola Gay. This aircraft made history on 6th August 1945 when it dropped the first nuclear weapon to be used in combat, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. After the war the aircraft remained in use as part of the US nuclear weapons development project, but never dropped another atomic bomb.
After a period of storage, the USAAF passed the aircraft to the Smithsonian in 1949, in recognition of its historical importance. It remained in this state at a variety of locations before making its final flight, to Andrews AFB, in 1953. After a period outside, it was moved to the NASM’s Paul E. Garber restoration facility for indoor storage, and eventually restored in the early 1980s. However, the aircraft was not able to be displayed in one piece (the fuselage did go on display downtown) until the opening of the Udvar-Hazy Center.
Two of the other WWII vintage exhibits reflect a new attitude towards aircraft restoration. Most restored museum aircraft are displayed as if they had just come out of the factory – of course this is not realistic, especially for warplanes. The museum has a pair of twin-boom fighters (a Lockheed P-38 Lightning and a Northrop P-61 Black Widow) that look anything but factory fresh!
The museum’s P-38J was used for test work for most of its career. This apparently included a test flight from Wright Field in the hands of Maj Richard Bong, the highest scoring US pilot of WWII. When it came time to restore the aircraft, rather than conduct a full repaint, the restoration team carefully dismantled the aircraft and cleaned all the parts before reassembly. The result is a much more genuine looking aircraft – complete with chipped and slightly faded paintwork – that really gives an impression of what machines like this actually looked like in service.
A similar process was undertaken in the restoration of the museum’s P-61C. The aircraft was delivered in July 1945 and had an interesting career, initially with the USAAF as a nightfighter, but also two stints with NACA (National Advisory Council on Aeronautics, the forerunner of NASA) as a research aircraft. During restoration, layers of paint were carefully removed to expose sets of markings from all three careers, and these have been retained giving visitors a unique glimpse of the aircraft’s history.
Moving on from the war machines which dominate the right hand side of the building, the left side consists of a mixture of commercial and transport aircraft along with GA types and a few experimental aircraft too.
One of the most impressive aircraft in this part of the museum is the magnificent Boeing Stratoliner. This four-engined aircraft from the 1930s was developed as a commercial transport based on the B-17C bomber. A total of ten were built, of which the museum’s aircraft is the sole survivor. It was restored by Boeing but ditched in Elliott Bay, Seattle in 2002, on what was supposed to be its last flight before delivery to the Smithsonian. After being restored once again it was flown to Dulles and joined the museum collection.
Another famous four-engined Boeing on display is the 367-80, otherwise known as the “Dash 80”, the aircraft that entered service as the 707. This revolutionary aircraft first flew in 1954, and paved the way for modern airliner development. The Dash 80 was later used by Boeing as a testbed for a variety of new configurations and systems, including a selection of engines, before being retired in 1972 and donated to the Smithsonian.
Dominating this part of the museum is a recent restoration – an immaculate Lockheed C-121C Super Constellation. This aircraft was delivered to the USAF in 1956 and operated as a long range cargo/passenger transport aircraft. It later served with several ANG units in a similar role before ending up with 193rd Tactical Electronic Warfare (TEW) Squadron of the Pennsylvania ANG. It was retired in 1977 and, after a period of storage, sold to a civilian operator in California.
The new owner failed to get regulatory approval to operate the Constellation in passenger service and the aircraft was sold again. It later found its way to the NASM in an exchange deal with its new owner. It has now been magnificently restored into the colours it wore while in service with the West Virginia ANG in the late 1960s.
At the far end of the building is an exhibition of early helicopters and autogyros which I found particularly interesting, mainly as most of the types were completely unfamiliar to me. They ranged from the conventional to the unusual and the frankly quite alarming! All were endearing in their own way- the Autogiro Company of America AC-35 for example was an attempt to produce a “roadable” autogyro, essentially a flying car. The aircraft was constructed in the 1930s and would not look out of place being flown by Donald Duck!
At the opposite end of the rotary spectrum, the museum holds one of two Bell XV-15 Tilt Rotor technology demonstrator aircraft built. This aircraft proved the tilt rotor concept was viable and eventually led to the development of the Bell V-22 Osprey. The museum’s aircraft operated from 1979-2003 in a joint NASA/US Army research program.
Adjoining the main Boeing Aviation Hangar is the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar, which is dominated by the Space Shuttle Orbiter Enterprise. Enterprise was the first orbitor to be built, but never actually went into space. Instead it was used as a test vehicle for atmospheric flights and ground tests. It was rolled out in 1976, and began flight testing in 1977, garnering huge amounts of data which helped in the development of the shuttle system. It also visited the Paris Airshow in 1983, before being retired to the NASM in 1985.
A full account of the aircraft on display at the Udvar Hazy Center would occupy several more pages, so I think that limitations of space dictate that I finish here – that is without mentioning the Air France Concorde, the Junkers Ju-52, the first aircraft operated by FedEx and the fine collection of pre-1920s aircraft! That said, I hope the photos help to fill in some of the gaps.
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