Plane for Free
We returned from our trip to Arizona and New Mexico last night, a broad arc taking in Tucson, Phoenix, the Grand Canyon, Santa Fe, and the radio telescope southwest of Albuquerque, along with points in between. I don’t want to overdo the details of the trip. As much as I enjoyed seeing them, verbal descriptions of landmarks like the Grand Canyon and Barringer’s Crater never capture the experience for the reader.
Nevertheless, some of what we saw bears repeating, so this week may end up a hyper-condensed telling of our journey.
I’ll start with a story one of the Pima Air & Space Museum’s staff told us. Pima is clearly created by airmen, for airmen; the displays lack interesting details, largely cataloguing the ownership of various planes and jets, without war stories. If you’re not an air veteran yourself, you get to see row after row of well-kept aircraft. But that’s okay, because the staff seems to be composed entirely of retired, and very garrulous veterans, eager for your willing ear. I asked the date of construction of one plane, curious how biplanes could still be around by the time Nazis were stamping swastikas on everything. It turns out the plane was a trainer, which Hitler gave to Finland in appreciation of their efforts to repel the little-remarked Soviet invasion of their country in the late 1930s. I don’t know why the Finns didn’t repaint it, or if they did and the museum repainted it in the original German design, nor even if the Finns used it for training; it might have been more immediately useful as a scout. I didn’t get to ask, because we heard this story instead:
Somehow, a private collector in the U.S. got his hands on this plane, which he used for joyrides. Acquiring the plane must have cost him a pretty penny, making an already expensive hobby even more so. Nor did he get his money’s worth: on one flight—I can’t remember whether it was his first with this plane—he suffered mechanical trouble and was forced to make an emergency landing on Valencia Boulevard, on the southern edge of Tucson. That trick would be impossible today; the traffic is thick and steady. We should know because we drove it. But back then, it was a dirt road, and Tucson was smaller, and had fewer cars per capita, so he managed to land safely. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get it working again, so he hiked off toward the airport, no more than a couple miles away, marched into the museum next door, and announced that there was a vintage trainer plane out on the road, and that the museum could have it if they were willing to go to the trouble of towing it in. And just like that, the Pima museum increased its stock by one plane. It’s hanging in the center of the WWII-era display hangar, given pride of place over several better-known planes.
Pretty amazing, huh?
Like I said, the staff is eager to tell its stories of the planes, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the very best ones can’t be bought for the price of a mere admission ticket. I prefer to imagine that the best, most personal stories are told after hours over a friendly drink, to other veterans.