SEATTLE – A new exhibit opening Sunday at the Museum of Flight in Seattle showcases some the great war birds of the 20th century, and tells the stories of the people who designed, built and flew them.
The Personal Courage Wing is an 88,000-square-foot addition to the Seattle museum that houses a collection of 28 restored or replicated World War I and World War II fighter planes.
Among the aircraft on display is a 1914 Caproni Ca 20, an Italian aircraft considered the world’s first fighter plane, and the only one ever built. It was donated to the museum by the Caproni family, which had stored it for decades inside a monastery, according to Dennis Parks, the director of collections and senior curator for the museum.
The speedy, single-seat monoplane happens to be Parks’ favorite. But picking a favorite from this field of famous aircraft has got to be a challenge.
The airplanes, displayed in two galleries in the $53.5 million exhibition hall, include famous fighters such as the Spitfire and the Sopwith Camel as well as the less celebrated, but extremely rare, Soviet Yak.
There’s a 1918 German Fokker, “the scourge of the skis over Europe” and the fearsome looking Curtis P-40N Warhawk, the fighter that was flown by the famous Flying Tigers.
The Goodyear GF-1D Corsair, with its famous bent-wing design, is the plane that helped overwhelm the Japanese Zero fighter. The radical Lockheed P-38L Lightning, an awesome war bird, was equipped with two 1,600-horsepower engines that made it fast and dangerous.
Thousands of these aircraft were built but few survive. The museum was able to secure airplanes from the renowned Champlin Fighter Collection. Doug Champlin had the best collection of piston-fighter aircraft in the world, Parks said.
There are 10 large World War II fighters on the first floor of the new exhibit hall, and 18 smaller World War I aircraft on the second floor.
“We pretty much have the icons of World War I and II,” he said.
Air power came into its own during World War II, and the stories of these planes and the pilots who flew them are told here.
“It was a time of stress and courage and sacrifice,” Parks said, citing as an example the Battle of Britain in which the Royal Air Force fought against the German Luftwaffe.
“This was the first time a country was saved from invasion by military aircraft,” Parks said, paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s famous statement about the battle: “Never in the face of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
The exhibits in the Personal Courage Wing tell the history and evolution of World War I and II fighter aviation. The idea is to help visitors relive this history by immersing them in the sights and sounds of the time, according to museum officials.
“We try to bring this all to life … to put them in the environment of their time,” Parks said.
The airplanes are shown in historical context by recreating the settings of their times. Thus, visitors will see recreations of French and German airfields, a pilots’ lounge, a French farmhouse, a battlefield trench, a Quonset hut and an aircraft carrier flight deck.
Technology and multimedia presentations such as an aircraft ID kiosk and database, in-depth oral histories, flight simulators, vintage film footage and photos help re-create the era, along with a live theater program called Amazing Skies Theater in which actors will portray characters from the past.
The exhibit’s opening Sunday coincides with the 60th anniversary of D-Day in which the Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944.
It took countless acts of personal courage and heroism to win that war, on the ground and in the air.
“You can’t win in the ground if you can’t win the airspace.” Parks said. In World War II, Allies did just that, thanks to amazing airplanes and the men who flew them.
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