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Airplane Heaven
| Article
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10804 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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3 / 1993 |
1,979 Words |
| Author
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Varda Avnisan
Varda Avnisan writes stories and children's books. |
A cluster of prefabricated beige buildings stands unimposing among gas stations and fast-food restaurants in Suitland, Maryland. To the unsuspecting visitor, the complex resembles an industrial park. This is near the truth, for, while no new products are made here, old and rare flying machines that have changed history and charted new courses in aviation are resuscitated.
The Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility of the National Air and Space Museum houses the nation's aviation treasures that cannot be displayed in the museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C., for lack of space. About 160 historically significant airplanes, along with some thirty thousand flight-related objects, are stored at the Garber.
The complex is named after the museum's first aeronautical curator and then its historian emeritus until his death in 1992. The facility originally named Silver Hill and renamed in 1980 in Garber's honor, is the only Smithsonian museum to have been named after a living person.
The collection includes such things as engines of all ages and designs, wooden propellers, model planes, photographs of war heroes and squadrons, machine-gun ammunition belts, World War I flight manuals, and compasses, as well as partially restored aircraft. Also at the facility are the National Air and Space archives. Between two and three million feet of film are kept along with aircraft engineering drawings from the 1890s to the 1970s. The collection is open to researchers and is often used by aeronautical engineers.
Here, airplanes are also restored. The former warriors of the sky, the Thunderbolts and Hurricanes, Sabres and Spitfires, weary and beaten up from bygone battles, leave the facility dignified and ready to take their place alongside Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and other landmarks in aviation at the National Air and Space Museum. The collection stirs any visitor, let alone an aviation buff, to nostalgia.
HISTORIC AIRCRAFT
Free tours of the Garber are given by trained guides who offer a two-to three-hour odyssey through the history, nostalgia, and trivia of modern flight. Almost all the thirty docents have a lifelong association with aviation and were pilots themselves. Tom Sykes, our guide, is no exception.
Sykes, a
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