WWII-era flight museum opens at Paine Field

EVERETT — When people walk by the P-51D Mustang fighter plane at the new Flying Heritage Museum at Paine Field, they’ll get to see more than just the restored plane.

They can watch footage of a pilot being reunited with that very same plane more than 60 years after he flew it near the end of World War II.

“It was pretty emotional when I first saw it,” said Harrison “Bud” Tordoff, 85, who was on hand for a sneak preview of the new museum Wednesday.

After three years in a small warehouse near the Arlington Airport, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen moved his collection of 15 World War II-era planes and other aviation artifacts to a 51,000-square-foot former hangar at Paine Field. A grand opening is planned for noon Friday.

The collection has been growing and needed more room, said Adrian Hunt, executive director for the collection.

“As soon as we reached sort of a critical mass, the plan was to share it with the public,” Hunt said.

In Arlington, the collection could be seen by appointment only. Now, people will be able to visit the museum during its regular hours.

The Paine Field facility not only has twice as much space as its former warehouse location in Arlington, it features more planes and more accessibility to more people. It also has more information to go with the planes from videos, photos, narratives and history.

“We’re not just collecting the planes, we’re trying to present the context and all the history that goes with them,” Hunt said.

About 10 years ago, Allen began collecting aircraft and weapons produced between 1935 and 1945 among the five principal combatants in World War II — the United States, the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union.

All of the aircraft and weapons represented some type of innovation at the time, and Allen paid to have everything painstakingly restored to its original condition.

The hangar at Paine Field built in 1949 sports an arched ceiling and lattice-work rafters, all painted white.

Allen’s company, Vulcan Inc., paid $5.2 million to renovate the former Alaska Airlines repair facility and will receive $2.2 million back from Snohomish County, which owns and operates Paine Field. Vulcan will pay the county $370,000 a year for 10 years under its lease agreement.

While the hangar’s size is an advantage, it’s not as intimate as the old space, said Art Unruh of Arlington, a World War II vet who worked as a docent at the former location.

“It’s beautiful, it’s awesome, but it’s not as personal and close as it was up there, because of the ceiling,” Unruh said. Unruh, 85, wrote a book titled “The Shadow Casters” about his experiences on B-17 bombers. He said he’ll still work occasionally at the new museum.

In the hangar, a giant door takes up one side, through which the planes are moved.

This is convenient because most of the planes still fly and will be taken out and flown every other weekend for the public to see. This is another difference from the Arlington location.

“We have to have little diapers underneath them, they’re all dripping oil and fluids,” Hunt said. “They’re not dry hulks you see in other museums, these are living machines we have here.”

Four mechanics work on the planes to keep them flying, Hunt said.

As visitors walk into the new space, they’ll be greeted by a gift shop to the left, with items such as model planes, T-shirts, books and mugs. On the right is a wall of photos depicting technological advances from 1935 to 1945, a time of great innovation spurred by the urgency of the war.

Then come the planes, parked on the glazed concrete floor. Banners hang from the rafters detailing technological advances, such as the Germans’ development of an anti-aircraft gun in 1936.

Temporary plastic barriers cordon off the planes. Next to each aircraft is a plaque detailing facts about that type of plane and about the plane on display itself.

Along the sides of the hangar are long sections of dramatic photos and information about each of the five countries and what it was like there during the war.

Also located throughout the collection are push-button video displays. In addition to Tordoff’s reunion with his P-51, another video tells the story of the “night witches.”

Such was the German name for young Russian women and teenage girls who flew old biplanes in night bombing missions over Nazi-occupied areas in World War II.

They bundled up in open cockpits against subzero temperatures. As they neared their targets, they’d cut their engines to avoid being heard, glide in and drop their bombs — often by hand.

Some of the surviving pilots are interviewed in the video with subtitles.

“We flew without parachutes so we could take more bombs,” one of them said.

Tordoff, who lives in St. Paul, Minn., flew the P-51D Mustang fighter plane on nearly 20 missions. In all, he flew about 60 missions, but most were in P-47 fighters.

After the war, the U.S. Air Force kept his plane in Germany. The plane was sold to Sweden, which operated it in its air force for many years. Then a collector in Florida bought it and kept it for 10 years or more.

Tordoff found out the plane was still in circulation after the collector tracked him down and told him, but he didn’t get to see the plane until Allen bought it and had it restored.

While Tordoff said he was tempted to start the plane up when he got back in the cockpit after 60 years, he probably won’t be flying it again.

“My wife won’t even let me drive,” he said.

Reporter Bill Sheets: 425-339-3439 or sheets@heraldnet.com.

Flying Heritage

Location: 3407 109th St. SW in Everett

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Open Tuesday through Sunday the rest of the year. Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Admission: Adults, $12; seniors and military, $10; children 6-15, $8; children under 5, free. $10 per person for groups.

Opens to the public: Noon on Friday

Phone: 206-342-4242