Memories of Yesterday; Visions of Tomorrow

The EAA Aviation Museum in Oshkosh will presently see the opening of two new exhibits dedicated respectively to the draftsmen and women by whom some of the Second World War’s most iconic aircraft were designed, and the career of Mr. Michael Winston Melvill—record-breaking pilot and the world’s first commercial astronaut.

The Telling Gallery in the EAA Aviation Museum’s Eagle Hangar will house AirCorps Aviation’s traveling Drafting: The Art of Aircraft Engineering in WWII exhibit—by which museum visitors will be afforded incisive and detailed looks at the fantastically complex and urgent business of drafting aircraft designs during World War II.

Younger readers under the impression subject exhibit pertains to selective service boards or NASCAR are hereby advised drafting, within the context of engineering and design, pertains to the fiddly and hard-earned discipline of composing drawings by which the construction or function of components, systems, vehicles or structures are visually communicated with an exacting degree of accuracy.

Stated otherwise, drafting occasions a syncretism of the human being and AutoCAD.

In any case, the Drafting: The Art of Aircraft Engineering in WWII exhibit features original WWII-Era drawings depicting the airframes, components, substructures, powerplants, and weapon-systems of some of the war’s most iconic aircraft—to include North American’s B-25 Mitchell medium bomber and P-51 Mustang fighter.

To make room for the exhibit, WASP: Women Flyers of WWII has been moved to a new permanent location in the Eagle Hangar near the Link Trainer.

The second new exhibit delves into the life and career of Mike Melvill—EAA Lifetime 53387. Mr. Melvill is most well-known for flying Scaled Composites’ SpaceShipOne experimental spaceplane on its first suborbital flight. Melvill, by virtue of the endeavor, became the world’s first commercial astronaut.

Included in the exhibit are a pair of astronaut wings presented to Mr. Melvill by the U.S. Department of Transportation, his Robert J. Collier Trophy and Medal, and the horseshoe-pin good-luck charm given to Melvill by his wife, Sally.

The exhibit opens 23 June and is located in the SpaceShipOne exhibit near the Eagle Hangar entrance.

The Engle Collection, located adjacent the  museum’s Wright Flyer replica, has a new addition of its own—specifically, a replica of the pressure-suit worn by American pilot, aeronautical engineer, NASA astronaut, and two-time Space Shuttle commander Joe Henry Engle during one of his three hypersonic X-15 flights.

The suit was crafted by Hollywood prop and costume maker Ryan Nagata and includes lakebed dirt from Edwards Air Force Base—utilized by Nagata to impart a sense of wear to the ensemble’s boots. The suit supplements the collection of personal archives donated to the museum by Joe and Jeanie Engle.

FMI: www.eaa.org