Aerial Relics Find an Earthly Resting Place

Amid the new military transports that shriek by like tortured behemoths, airplane lovers here are preserving everything from biplanes to jet fighters for future generations.

Lt. Col. Lou Tobin oversees the small army of volunteers, civilian and military, who have refurbished and expanded the just-opened aircraft museum at the C-5 cargo plane base in Fairfield, about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco.

Tobin, a C-5 pilot who satisfies his affinity for history as liaison officer for the museum, said that too little has been done to save obsolete military planes. Most are scrapped, left to rust at the huge airplane “boneyard” in Arizona, or used as targets.

“We in America haven’t done a very good job of collecting this old aluminum,” Tobin said, waving with pride toward the aging transports scattered on the open grounds around the museum building.

“If you think this is interesting to us now, what about to someone in 20 or 30 years?” he asked.

The transports range in size from a relatively small Lockheed C-56 that once transported President Franklin D. Roosevelt to “Old Shaky,” the rattling C-124 Globemaster that resembles a giant, stubby cigar with wings. With a nose that opens for easy loading, it is the forerunner of the modern C-5, the largest aircraft in the world.

Nearby are bombers, including an early version of the well-known B-52. Visitors can climb into the cramped metal jungle that serves as the flight deck on the aging bombers, many of which still remain part of the nation’s nuclear fleet.

Constructed in 1956, the plane’s cockpit carries graffiti from its many crews--things like “Randy’s Dandies” and “Boulware’s Bombing Bastards.”

The stiletto profile of a Vietnam-era F-105 jet fighter contrasts sharply with the towering transports and bombers. From the top of a 15-foot ladder, the tiny cockpit carved into the aircraft looks much like a chair strapped to a rocket.

Down the road at a hangar, volunteers are rebuilding a B-29 bomber that flew against Japan during World War II. The plane, which contains 12 machine gun stations, escaped with only minor structural damage.

Its first crew, all married, named it “Miss America ‘62” because that was when they figured their daughters would be old enough to compete for the title.

The pilot’s name, J. F. Sapp, is scratched on the plane just below the cockpit. Near it are 66 outlines of bombs representing each combat mission. Six etched circles represent missions to Japanese harbors where mines were dropped. Two scratched Japanese “Rising Sun” flags represent missions where Japanese planes were shot down.

Tobin said the Travis Air Force Base Historical Society, the nonprofit foundation that operates the museum, has acquired its planes and aircraft parts from other Air Force installations, other base museums and private donors throughout the Pacific region.

Some have been fixed up enough so they can be flown. Some have been loaded in C-5s that would have returned to Travis empty otherwise. One was even hauled by barge into a nearby slough and then towed over roads and fields onto the base.

Tobin said the 1,078-member foundation is negotiating for acquisition of a well-preserved B-17E bomber that crashed in a New Guinea swamp in February, 1942. The crew survived.

Inside the museum, which is in an old commissary building, the centerpiece is the Gonzales biplane. Willie and Arthur Gonzales built it out of mostly wood and nails in 1912 behind their grandmother’s house in San Francisco.

They could not fly the plane in the city so the Gonzales brothers disassembled it, packed it in crates and put it on a train to Woodland. There, they rebuilt and flew it together since it required two pilots.

After two weeks of testing, the plane was again disassembled and loaded on a train for the trip back to San Francisco.

The ritual continued for at least three years.

Concerned that the aircraft violated patent laws on their plane, the Wright brothers visited the Gonzales brothers to inspect the invention. The Wrights decided the biplane did not duplicate their aircraft.

One of the highlights among the miscellaneous items scattered throughout the museum is a engine removed from Howard Hughes’ giant, eight-engine Spruce Goose. The monster, with 28 cylinders and 56 spark plugs, is the largest, most powerful piston engine ever built for airplanes. It is nearly as big as a Volkswagen Beetle.

Among the other attractions are training planes, models, a spacecraft display, a B-17 bomb sight and a Gatling gun removed from an F-105 fighter plane involved in the Vietnam War.

The military’s budget for the museum is $15,000 annually, Tobin said, but foundation members have contributed more than $100,000.