Aviation Museum Reviews:

Planes of Fame
Air Museum at Chino is Home to Huge Collection of Civil & Military Airplanes

by Jim Ragsdale

The nation's largest privately owned collection of vintage civil and military aircraft is on public display every day at Southern California's Chino Airport in Riverside County. The "Planes of Fame" museum currently has four hangars and an outdoor exhibit area jammed with a vast collection of American and foreign airplanes and is moving rapidly ahead with plans to build two large new hangars.

The museum hosts a regular series of programs featuring guest speakers, seminars, fly-ins and an annual air show. About 150 airplanes make up its permanent collection, most of them located at Chino but some at a branch museum at Arizona's Valle Airport near the Grand Canyon. A great many of the aircraft are in flyable condition, and orientation flights are often made available (for a fee) in some of the World War II-era warbirds and other historic airplanes. Some of the prize examples, such as a Northrop N9MB flying wing prototype and a Japanese Zero, both flyable, are unique to the Chino facility.

Soaring over Mt. Baldy is the "Planes of Fame" air museum's lovingly restored Northrop N9MB flying wing, the only remaining aircraft of its type.

Mark Foster, "Planes of Fame" director of corporate relations, said construction will soon begin on a large new hangar at Chino that will house some of the collection plus a new main entrance and gift shop. It is expected to be ready by year-end 2003, Foster said. Another new hangar to house the museum's collection of jet airplanes is also in the planning stages.

Founder and head of the museum is Ed Maloney, who can often be found at the facility proudly explaining exhibits to visitors.

Linda Dozier, SCAA director and past president, serves on the "Planes of Fame" board of directors. She and her husband, Tom, volunteer much of their free time to the museum and often help other volunteers restore its historic aircraft. She said one of the newest attractions available to visitors is a re-creation of the hangar deck of the World War II carrier Enterprise, which now houses many of the "Planes of Fame" museum's collection of naval aircraft.

"Planes of Fame" air museum founder Ed Maloney with one of his newest acquisitions, a Soviet-era MiG-21, now part of the collection at Chino.Chino museum's flyable North American B-25J Mitchell is admired by SCAA director Jim Ragsdale, a former B-25 pilot.Linda Dozier and Mark Foster in the museum's re-creation of the U.S.S. Enterprise hangar deck. In foreground is a Grumman F3F-2 "Flying Barrel" fighter of 1938, and in background is a 1948 Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat.type.A trio of volunteers at the museum work to restore a tiny Shoestring racer of the 1940s. In background is a Northrop Alpha transport in TWA markings, also undergoing restoration.

"Planes of Fame" air museum founder Ed Maloney with one of his newest acquisitions, a Soviet-era MiG-21, now part of the collection at Chino.

Chino museum's flyable North American B-25J Mitchell is admired by SCAA director Jim Ragsdale, a former B-25 pilot.

Linda Dozier and Mark Foster in the museum's re-creation of the U.S.S. Enterprise hangar deck. In foreground is a Grumman F3F-2 "Flying Barrel" fighter of 1938, and in background is a 1948 Grumman F8F-2 Bearcat.type.

A trio of volunteers at the museum work to restore a tiny Shoestring racer of the 1940s. In background is a Northrop Alpha transport in TWA markings, also undergoing restoration.

The "Planes of Fame" air museum is located at 7000 Merrill Avenue, at the Chino Airport in Riverside County.
Telephone (909) 597-3722.
It is open 7 days per week all year, except Thanksgiving and Christmas, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission fee is $8.95 for adults, $1.95 for children ages 11 and under, and accompanied children under 5 are admitted free. Various categories of memberships are available from $35 per year up.

More information and directions to the site are available on the museum's web site, www.planesoffame.org

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Aviation Book Reviews:

A collection of historic and humorous aviation anecdotes by ACSC's Bill Schoneberger is a good read and benefits the Scholarship Fund.

Damn If They Ain't Flew
By William A. Schoneberger
Published by Walsworth Publishing Co., Marceline, Missouri

Copies may be ordered for $12.95 each, plus S&H, by phoning the publishing company at 1-800-369-2646, ext. 3373.

Reviewed by Jeff Lenorvovitz

Written by longtime Aero Club member William Schoneberger, this insider's view of the aerospace sector is an anthology of brief stories gathered first-hand during his long career as an industry communicator or passed on from reliable sources.

Its insights include many untold stories about the mysterious Howard Hughes--including one about Hughes asking if the dates of the upcoming 1973 Paris Air Show could be changed because he and trusted confidant Jack Real had a schedule conflict that would prevent the pair from attending the biennial event!

A collection of historic and humorous aviation anecdotes by ACSC's Bill Schoneberger is a good read and benefits the Scholarship Fund.Other anecdotes focus on such industry luminaries as Donald Douglas, Pat Hyland, Kelly Johnson, Jack Northrop, Gerhard Neumann, Jacqueline Auriol, Ben Rich and Andrei Tupolev.

Schoneberger has more than 45 years of experience in the aerospace industry, including heading up the communications departments at GE Aircraft Engines and the Northrop Corporation. He was awarded the Society of Aerospace Communicators' Lyman Award in 1988. He is a past president and current director of Aero Club of Southern California.

Anyone who has even a casual relationship with--or interest in--the aerospace industry will find stories of interest in "Damn If They Ain't Flew."

Schoneberger writes fondly about the late Nieson Himmel (the loveable reporter for Aviation Week & Space Technology, Aerospace Daily, Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Los Angeles Times) who had the habit of filling his car from front seat to trunk with newspapers, magazines and other "reference" material.

He also recounts the shocked reactions of GE Aircraft Engines management when Rolls-Royce outmaneuvered the U.S. powerplant manufacturer for the contract to supply jet engines for Lockheed's L-1011 TriStar airliner (a decision that Lockheed soon came to regret).

Schoneberger also takes the reader through the six lives of Gerhard Neumann (admiringly nicknamed "Herman the German" by his fellow Flying Tigers in China during World War II), who ultimately became a GE Aircraft Engines designer and executive.

This is Schoneberger's eighth book (previous works include "California Wings; A History of Aviation in the Golden State") and proceeds from the sale of "Damn If They Ain't Flew" go to the Aero Club of Southern California's Marsha Toy Scholarship Fund. The book includes numerous photos as well as aircraft paintings by renowned aviation artist Douglas Ettridge.

Schoneberger remains active in the industry, working with the Aero Club of Southern California and the Flight Path Learning Center of Southern California.

Editor's note: Reviewer Lenorvovitz, an aviation journalist based in Virginia, is webmaster for the Society of Aerospace Communicators (SAC). The review is reproduced here courtesy of Lenorovita and SAC, whose site may be visited at www.saccom.org.

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Paul MacCready's Amazing Career Has Guided Technology Into Many Exciting New Directions

More With Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight
By Paul Ciotti
Published in 2002 by Encounter Books, San Francisco; 259 pages - $26.95

Reviewed by Jim Ragsdale

Buy it Now! from amazon.com

Aero Club members who were fortunate enough to attend the club's banquet in January, 1999 in which Paul MacCready was presented the Howard Hughes Memorial Award already know something about the man who some years ago was voted "Engineer of the Century" by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and who was described as "one of the 20th century's 100 most creative minds" by Time magazine.

Other members have had the pleasure of talking with the soft-spoken inventor at recent ACSC meetings, which MacCready often attends. Those who may not be familiar with MacCready's astonishing achievements in aircraft design and other scientific fields now have an informative and entertaining way to get acquainted with him. They can do so in the fascinating pages of a new book about MacCready by California-based journalist Paul Ciotti.

Helios, one of the latest unmanned prototypes from AeroVironment, founded by Paul MacCready, is shown here climbing toward a world record altitude of 96,863 feet, set in 2001. Designers believe the solar-powered flying wing, driven by small electric motors turning propellers, could be a lower-cost alternative to communications satellites, staying aloft six months at a time. -- NASA photo by Carla Thomas.

In More With Less: Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight, Ciotti traces the career of a man for whom the oft-used term "genius" seems quite inadequate. As a boy in Connecticut, MacCready became fascinated with model airplanes and built a number of them that won awards in competitions. "I built more models than any kid in the country," MacCready once said. "Boy, am I glad I wasn't a football hero type. Small, uncoordinated, shy... thank goodness I had that."

He soon graduated to actual flying, first in sailplanes in which he set national and world records while at the same time learning a lot about weather and air currents aloft, then in powered airplanes. Later, armed with a Ph.D. in meteorology and aeronautics from Caltech, he turned his efforts to the design of flying machines that would do things nobody else had been able to accomplish.

The world first took notice of MacCready the designer when he put together a team of eccentrics and radical thinkers (about aeronautics) who helped him design and build the first man-powered aircraft, the now-famous Gossamer Condor. In 1971 he founded a company, AeroVironment, that turned many of his wildly unconventional ideas into other man- and solar-powered vehicles that set records in the air and on the ground. Today, the company continues to produce flying vehicles that are simply amazing for their size, with wingspans ranging from a few inches to more than 200 feet, and their performance.

Following MacCready's life through the pages of Ciotti's excellent book is a delightful experience, one that anyone with the least bit of interest in aviation and other technologies will enjoy immensely.

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Want to Review a New Book or Museum?

Aero Club members who would like to write a review of any recently-published book or particular museum that deals with aviation or space flight are encouraged to do so for possible publication on this ACSC web site. Books may be fiction or non-fiction. Reviews, which should be 500 words or fewer in length, may be e-mailed to Jim Ragsdale, editor of the web site. The address is jwragsdale@sbcglobal.net