Shoot-'Em-Up in Chicago

The scene was ripe for Walter Mitty. Off the portside of the Army UH-1D ("Huey") helicopter was a sweeping view of a Viet Nam valley. The air crackled with messages from pilot to gunner reporting enemy fire from thatched huts in the village below. The gunner, a young towheaded boy with bubble gum bulging his cheeks, swiveled the M-60 machine gun into position and squeezed off a perfect burst into one of the huts. "That's the way, Jeff!" cheered the lad's buddy, above the whoppa-whoppa-whoppa din of the rotor blades. "Now hit that bridge."

To Jeff, and thousands of other eager youngsters, it was just as real as action shots of the Viet Nam war on TV. In fact, it was all part of a new U.S. Army exhibit inside Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The helicopter was grounded, the landscape was a diorama, sound effects were recorded, and the machine gun was electronically rigged so that its light beam made bulbs glow when a direct hit was scored.

Something Livelier. The Huey was not the only attraction. Elsewhere in the 7,200-sq.-ft. exhibit, whole families scrambled into an M-113 armored personnel carrier for a four-minute film--viewable through the driver's cupola-simulating the troop vehicle's jolting movement over land and water on its way into battle. At a shooting gallery, more kids lined up for electronic target practice with Army rifles ranging from the .58-cal. Civil War "Zouave" to the M16, or tried to knock out miniature moving tanks with a fixed "Dragon" antitank missile launcher, the weapon that will replace the present 90-mm. recoilless rifle.

The whole show was designed and built for the museum by the U.S. Army Exhibit Unit, based at Cameron Station in Alexandria, Va., partly to rival the Navy's popular World War II submarine that lurks in the basement. Originally, the Army proposed a balanced historical survey from the Revolutionary War to the present. But the museum wanted something livelier, with more contemporary hardware and plenty of buttons to push. The museum's objective: greater viewer participation.

Grown Americans Do. When the exhibit opened, the viewers certainly participated--but not always in ways that had been anticipated. On the third day, some 80-odd flower children staged a swarm-in, temporarily seized the personnel carrier and the copter, and forced the museum to close down the exhibit for half an hour. Pickets 150 strong showed up outside, carrying signs reading L.B.J.'S HEAD START TEACH OUR CHILDREN TO KILL. A group called Veterans for Peace in Viet Nam fired off a letter to the Army condemning the show as a "do-it-yourself massacre." A delegation of ministers from neighboring Hyde Park stopped by to register a complaint, and the Chicago Sun-Times editorialized: "To make it 'fun' for our own children to pretend to be firing heavy weapons at homes where innocent South Vietnamese might be living is, in a word, appalling."

Nothing of the sort, snapped the Army. After all, as the exhibit was set up, the enemy opened fire first. "We might have been a little silly not to realize how some people might feel about shooting huts," admitted a Pentagon general, "but we still think it's a good show. Our kids ought to know our fellas have the right to shoot back, and also that grown Americans do shoot back." But the dissent proved too much. Last week Museum Director Daniel M. MacMaster ordered the lights for the diorama shut off and declared the helicopter off limits to visitors.

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