Second Hottest Show in Town

AMERICAN SCENE Second Hottest Show in Town

The hottest show in Washington is, of course, the advent of the new Administration. Without question, the second hottest show is the spectacular new National Air and Space Museum. Attendance for the first six months has reached more than 5 million, nearly double the projections. TIME Correspondent Jerry Hannifin has touched down in the museum almost a dozen times. His report:

Along the vast greensward that sweeps from the foot of Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument, there glitters the newest star of the Smithsonian Institution. The National Air and Space Museum (NASM), a huge, elegant hangar designed by St. Louis Architect Gyo Obata, is a cathedral to man's fascination with flight. Surfaced in pink Tennessee marble and bronze-tinted glass, the museum houses many of the great artifacts of aviation and space travel in a three-story structure 680 ft. long. A Washington rarity in that it was finished on time and within the $40 million budget, the museum was officially opened just prior to the Bicentennial Fourth. At the time, President Ford aptly described it as "America's birthday gift to itself."

An extraordinary present, for sure. The Smithsonian, otherwise known as "the nation's attic," has created a paean to the daring imaginations of the Wright brothers, Goddard, Lindbergh, Rickenbacker, Sikorsky, Earhart, Douglas and Lockheed's Johnson. The scene stealers are located in three giant bays (each 124 ft. by 115 ft. by 62 ft. high). In the main entrance bay--the Milestones of Flight Gallery--are the Wrights' Kitty Hawk Flyer, the first aircraft to achieve manned, powered flight, and the Spirit of St. Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh, need anyone be reminded, flew the Atlantic solo in 1927.

Most Appealing. Museum Director Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 astronaut who circled the moon in the command module Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface for the first time, figures that the Spirit is the most popular airplane in NASM. It was a big drawing card in the Smithsonian's old building as well, and Lindbergh himself viewed it there a number of times. Once, in 1959, Lindbergh asked museum officials if he might see the plane alone and startled them when he also requested a ladder. Without a word, he climbed the ladder and lifted himself into the cockpit's wicker seat. In the darkened hall, he sat silent for 40 minutes.

Other sure eye-catchers are Collins' own spacecraft and the Friendship Seven Mercury capsule that carried John Glenn on the first U.S. orbital flight. Perhaps the most appealing exhibit in the Space Hall, another of the great bays, is the massive black and gold Skylab space station. The only bottleneck in the building is at Skylab's narrow portal, where crowds line up to enter. Says Collins:

"It's probably the only place in the world where people can walk through a real spacecraft."

Beyond the glass-walled main halls is a vast array of unique aircraft, satellites, rockets and other displays. Howard Hughes' H-1 airplane, designed in the 1930s, is the centerpiece of the flight-technology exhibit. In aerodynamic terms, says Collins' deputy Mel Zisfein, "the H-l is the most beautiful aircraft we have." In 1935 the plane flew at a then record speed of 352 m.p.h. In its day, it was at least a decade ahead of the state of the art of aerodynamics with its smooth, flush-riveted body. With his characteristic attention to detail, Hughes designed the plane so that even the slots in the screwheads that attach the wooden wings to the aluminum fuselage were lined up in the direction of flight, presumably to reduce air drag.

Hughes would not be happy, however, if he could see the plane today--running under the fuselage is a thin, golden streak of leaked oil.

The oldest aircraft on display is Otto Lilienthal's 1894 glider, with its willow-and-bamboo frame and cotton-cloth covering. When Lilienthal died near the turn of the century, his last words were reported to be: "Sacrifices must be made." In the museum's military aviation exhibits, that sense of sacrifice is pervasive, if in a different context. The most durable warplanes are there: the Fokker, Spad XVI (Billy Mitchell's own), P-40E, B26, Spitfire, German Messerschmitt and Italian Macchi MC-202. So is the old workhorse of World War II--and beyond--the DC-3. Said one former combat pilot, standing before a full-scale diorama of aerial combat with a B-17 under attack: "It's so real that you want to duck the chin gunner. Wait'll the kids see this." Another veteran who flew over Europe said wistfully as he viewed the empty aircraft: "I see faces. The faces of those who didn't come back." There is still more. A rather unnerving audio-visual display of how modern air traffic controllers work. A film called To Fly--so realistic that some viewers get airsick. Said a former Navy pilot: "My God, I'm getting vertigo." A life-size model of the Soviet Soyuz space vehicle coupled to an Apollo capsule for a display of the 1975 joint space venture. Also, of course, a model of Sputnik, the satellite that helped to goose America into space.

In all, the collection of aircraft, ranging from the most primitive to the supersophisticated, leaves one in awe not of machines but of man--of how far, in so short a time, he has extended himself and his universe.

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