"AKA" Jimmy Doolittle Air & Space Museum

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Curator’s Corner

By Gary Leiser

Following the groundbreaking ceremony that was held last June, we have done our best to try to maintain the momentum for building the Jimmy Doolittle Air and Space Museum. All of this work came to a sudden halt, at least briefly, as a result of the events on September 11. All of us became preoccupied with other things, other priorities. For a while the base was sealed tight; and a high state of security is still in effect. As a consequence, the museum has been almost deserted. We had only a few hundred visitors in September, for example, and all tours were cancelled. This state of affairs has been graphic evidence of the need to build a new facility on the edge of the base where it can be isolated from base operations but directly accessible to the public.

During this "quiet time," we focused on housekeeping activities and seeing to paperwork that had long been avoided. I should add that we all deserted our posts to see President Bush when he passed through Travis in mid October. Meanwhile, Msgt Joe Inocencio was busy with a number of projects: adding mulch to the area around the gazebo, painting the historian’s office, managing our hazardous waste program, getting our electric Hyster forklift to work, and setting up a schedule with the base paint shop for painting our ugliest aircraft. There was no work on new exhibits. We assisted with preparing for the feasibility study for the new museum and polished the "plan" for official submission to the Air Force. I addressed several service organizations on our efforts. We had planned to host the biennial AMC Historians and Museum Conference in early November, but this has been postponed until next March. Mark Pollman was out for a few weeks recovering from surgery, but he is now back running the office.

Nuts and Bolts: Jim Martin continued to inspect the aircraft several times a week. He also did some maintenance on both the B-52 and C-7 and helped build a storage area for some items currently in trailers. Eric Schmidt helped him with the C-7 and took over as maintenance chief pending Ned Fall’s recovery from a heart attack. Joe Tattersall made a rocket for the F-84 and repaired the throttle quadrant for the T-37. He was out briefly for thyroid surgery but has bounced back. Carl Bodin continued to work on restoring an engine pod for the C-123 and is almost finished. Bill Lancaster put in many hours building an office for the wing historian who will move to the museum following its completion. Don Austin devoted a number of hours to the C-124. And Ben Reed was busy with a number of tasks: painting the vertical stabilizer of the B-29 and touch-up painting on the C-119, cleaning out trailers in our storage area and building a storage area in the museum to house what could be salvaged from them, and sorting through, culling, and properly filing the photos in our archives—a big job.

Donations: During the past few months, the museum has received the following donations: five large-scale model aircraft (Spirit of St. Louis, Stearman, British SE5, Great Lakes Trainer, and Dauntless SBD-3) made by Harold Winslow; from Heidi Belden the uniform of Walter Bridgeman of the 367 Fighter Group, who was shot down over Germany in WWII and held as a POW; and from General Robertson, AMC/CC, his collection of 700 coins representing dozens of USAF and other US and foreign military units and organizations.

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