The Membership Newsletter for The Military Aviation Museum November 2019 INSIDE THIS ISSUE: Santa is On His Way to the Museum Albatros D. Va 2 Goxhill Watch Office 3 Holiday Hangar Concert 3 Summer of Flight 4 Runners Runway 4 Biplanes and Brews 5 Mid-Atlantic Dawn Patrol 5 Wings, Wheels, Air & Auto 6 Creeds Drone Club 6 STEM Exploration Tours 7 Military Aviation Museum www.MilitaryAviationMuseum.org Virginia Beach Airport www.VBairport.com Fighter Factory www.FighterFactory.com Biplanes and Brews www.BiplanesandBrews.com Santa can’t wait to hop on our biplane to come up for the show: Atlantic Coast S Gauge Association, visit the Military Aviation Museum and bring his South Hampton Roads N-trak Club, Tidewater O favorite Tidewater Model Railroaders with him to Gauge Association (TOGA), Tidewater Modular the 11th annual PLANES, TRAINS and SANTA Railroad Club (TMRC) (HO scale) and Richard event taking place November 29, 30 and December 1. Schwab (N scale). The groups will set up in the Navy Hangar. The kids and parents all have a great time Waiting for Santa’s arrival at the new time of looking over all the train displays and the Museum’s 10AM is always the hardest part of the weekend. aircraft. Everyone lines the runway to await his arrival. Santa expects to spend several hours Friday thru Sunday Mark your calendars and bring the whole talking to hundreds of kids to find out what they family out to kick off the holidays and avoid the want for Christmas. The United States Marine Corps mall crowds. Kids 17 and under get free admission. Reserve has been invited to be on hand to collect Santa, Planes and Trains, Marines and motorcycles toys and donation for Toys-For–Tots. Stop by the … what’s better than that! q Gift Shop and select an unused and wrapped toy to donate to the Marines. Each kid that donates a toy will get a ride in a motorcycle sidecar that very day! Everyone is looking forward to this November. Planes, Trains & Santa November 29 - December 1 The following model train groups are expected to set PAGE 2 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4 HANGAR HIGHLIGHT 1917 Albatros D.Va The Military Aviation Museum’s Albatros D.Va was originally built in 1978 by master craftsman Art Williams and his team at Williams Flugzeugbau at Guenzburg, 35 miles east of Augsburg in southern Germany. Williams Flugzeugbau was one of the first companies to build highly accurate Great War reproductions, and go to the expense of making quantity runs of the German lozenge fabric. Our Ranger-engine Albatros D.Va was registered to the Surrey-based Leisure Sport Company in August 1978, and flew alongside several other Great War replicas. Until recently it was displayed at the Fleet Air Arm Museum (FAAM) in Yeovilton, Somerset, England. The Museum’s Albatros D.Va is painted in the markings of D.Va D5397/17, flown during December 1917 to January 1918 by Lt Hans von Hippel of Jasta 5. It was acquired by the Museum in late 2012. On 17 May 2016, it received its airworthiness certificate from the FAA. q VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4 PAGE 3 The Goxhill “Watch Office” is Coming to Life … Written By Mike Potter The WWII control tower, relocated from Goxhill England to the Virginia Beach airport is opening to the public. After two years of interior work, restoration, the retro-fitting of appropriate temperature and humidity controls, and the addition of extensive original period equipment and furnishings, the museum is starting to experiment with the “soft opening” of this historic building to learn how to create the most powerful guest experience possible. Many of our guests are largely unaware of the historical significance of the Goxhill Airbase, and future exhibits will focus on this. Just months after Pearl Harbor, men and machines were beginning to flood into England as part of the “Friendly Invasion”, and the Royal Air Force base at Goxhill, England was the very first of hundreds of such bases turned over to or built for the United States Army Air Forces. Moreover, Goxhill is the first independent home in England of what was to become “The Mighty Eighth.” Goxhill was an initial and crucial part of the beginning of the long road to Victory in Europe. Getting to this stage has involved thousands of volunteer hours in research, fabrication, and exhibit planning. While there is still much to be done, the initial results have garnered high praise from museum professionals and guests alike. Our visitors will be able to reflect on the use of RAF / USAAF Goxhill by both services and countries as well as learn much more than in typical museums about what life was like on an airbase and on the “Home Front” in England. There are literally hundreds of period pieces now on exhibit with the hope that the way the rooms are arranged will help guests feel like they are in a working World War II control tower, not a museum. Museum volunteers built the very large main control room desk based on period photographs, and also constructed many of the exhibits for the building. Also, our relationship with the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk brought us a selection of high- quality purpose-built museum display cabinets that blend in perfectly with the exhibits. If you have not seen this building and its upgraded contents lately, you owe it to yourself to see the many exhibit details that our guests will be telling their friends about for years to come. q Our Holiday Hangar Concert Returns for a Third Year Start the holiday season with fun for the entire family! Come listen to the sounds of Symphonic Artistry on Sunday, December 8th from 5:30PM- 8PM (Doors open at 5PM) FREE Tickets are available in advance at Eventbrite. Or contact the Museum Gift Shop at: 757-721-PROP (7767). Enjoy Food Trucks and beverages for all ages. q Free & Open to the Public Sunday, December 8th PAGE 4 VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4 MUSEUM EVENT WRAP UP Summer of Flight Comes to a Close The following is a photo essay of our special Summer of Flight celebrating the museum’s 11th anniversary. We hope you got a chance to come out and enjoy the shows. Look for us again next year. Don’t miss out! Fall 5K Runners Runway Fall is in the air, and that means weekend mornings' runners and walkers swarm the runway with festive fundraiser events. Returning this year for their annual events are the 9-11 Heroes 5K run by the Travis Manion Foundation; Joggin' for Frogmen 5K run and walk operated by the Navy SEAL Foundation; and the Frick & Frack Breast Cancer 5K run for local families affected by this disease. New this year is the Out of the Darkness walk to raise awareness and funds for suicide prevention and treatment. Here are a few photos from several of these events. Outdoors in the fall… in Pungo at the aviation museum… awesome! q VOLUME 12, ISSUE 4 PAGE 5 Cleared for Takeoff: Biplanes and Brews, 2019 Written By Jonathan R. Lichtenstein As dawn broke over the Pungo Aerodrome, Also on hand during the weekend were time and place became indistinct. Was it a turf members of Tidewater R/C, Academy of Model runway somewhere west of the French salient Aeronautics (AMA) Charter No. 641. As part onto which the hangar doors had been opened? of the 8th-annual Mid-Atlantic Dawn Patrol, The absence of marching feet belied the fact it participants displayed an impressive array of was October of 2019, and not the autumn of remote-control scale models to recreate some 1919. However, even as the beleaguered armies of the more daring maneuvers reminiscent of of Europe withdrew their troops from the front man’s first forays into aerial combat. Besides lines a century ago, assuring an end to the “War sky pilots, we observed the pilots of fine antique to End All Wars,” the distant echoes of the “Guns motorcars from the Tidewater Region of the of August” could still be heard from the fields of Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA), the Military Aviation Museum, in the course of including Mr. Samuel Kern’s 1925 Franklin, Mr. this year’s Biplanes and Brews. Ken Talley’s 1929 Buick Model 47, Mr. David Curl’s 1929 Ford Model A Huckster, and Mr. On display was the latest addition to the Tim Hund’s 1921 Locomobile Type 48. They museum’s stable of colorful WWI-era flying were joined by the Hucks Starter of the Military machines, a rare Thomas-Morse S-4 Scout of Aviation Museum, built on the chassis of a 1918, restored initially between 1955 and 1972 genuine 1919 Ford Model TT. by Mr. Roger Freeman and his late father, Mr. Among other guests at this year’s event were Ernest Freeman. This advanced single-seat talented vocalist Ms. Theresa Eaman, the ladies trainer of the First World War was dubbed of the Manhattan Dolls, and the musicians of the “Tommy” by pilots of the day. Due to the the Grace Street Seven, a period jazz septet. Ms. prevailing winds, the S-4 was scratched from Eaman gave a touching rendition of “The Star- the flight roster for the weekend, but it was the Spangled Banner,” before commencement of Mid-Atlantic Dawn Patrol pleasure of Mr. Mike Spalding, Chief Pilot of the flight operations on Saturday and Sunday. Her Fighter Factory, to demonstrate for guests the voice also helped to encourage the convivial The Mid-Atlantic Dawn Patrol, hosted by Tidewater Scout’s original 80hp nine-cylinder Le Rhône atmosphere inside of the museum’s Army R/C, the local chapter of the Academy of Model 9C rotary engine.