Virginia Air and Space Museum

The Virginia Air and Space Centre is just one of the dozens of thriving military and civilian historical museums dotted along the coast between Washington, DC, and Savannah. It is also one of the best. Located at 600 Settlers Landing Road, Hampton, VA, it draws on a wealth of local area history going back to the Wright Brothers and Kitty Hawk in 1903 and the 1916 Curtiss Flying School in nearby Newport News.

Visitor interaction

The museum itself is more of an interactive learning process. There are plenty of aircraft and spacecraft exhibits, but a prominent focus is on visitor participation. This might range from piloting a simulator and simulating a balloon ascent to learning flight deck marshalling signals.

Nearby Hampton Roads was also the site of the (in)famous BGEN Billy Mitchell trials that “proved” that warships could be sunk by aerial bombing. In one narrow sense Mitchell was right. A ship could be sunk by aerial bombing, but as WW II clearly demonstrated, land-based aircraft had a poor record in finding and sinking any kind of ship. Mitchell’s land-based level bomber theory was frequently ineffective, as HMAS Australia confirmed when bombed by “friendly” B17s in the Coral Sea in May 1942. Naval aircraft, on the other hand, with their specialist crews and weapons, had a better record, as USN crews demonstrated in the Battle of Midway a month or so later. Nowadays modern weapons, such as infra-red homing weapons and laser-guided ordnance, at last give support to part of Mitchell’s position.

Although the ship was not fighting back, it had no damage control resources, it was dead in the water and its sinking was due more to near misses than direct hits, the USAAF BGEN Mitchell parlayed the demonstration into a big USAAF propaganda victory.

Hampton Roads was also the site for Eugene Ely’s first launch from a ship, the USS Birmingham on 14 November 1914. After such a promising start, the RN rapidly overtook USN aircraft carrier development during WW I. It was not until 1922 that the first USN carrier was commissioned, the converted collier USS Langley, again in nearby Norfolk. Since then, as the museum displays remind us, many notable aircraft carriers have been built in the local area, including the Nimitz class nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan.

A huge sectioned model of this ship is displayed in the museum, together with an intriguing sliding LCD screen that displays selected internal aspects of the ship. Visitors just slide the screen to an area of interest and the internal workings of the area are displayed.

Aircraft and spacecraft research

As well as warship building, the area is also famous for testing and developing aircraft and spacecraft. Langley Field, the USAF’s oldest aircraft testing ground, dates from 1916 and spacecraft research laboratories are also nearby. The world’s first full-scale wind tunnel laboratory was commissioned at Langley Field Laboratory under NACA’s (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) auspices in May 1931.

In 1958 NACA became NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and this led to the most expensive and ambitious wind tunnel ever built, the National Transonic Facility, which was commissioned in 1982. One museum exhibit is an interesting ex-NASA F-18 with a clumsy-looking vectored thrust attachment bolted on. This particular aircraft investigated high angle of attack flight control and engine performance parameters in combat situations.

The museum is open daily from about 1000 to 1700 (Sundays 1200 to 1700). Entry fees are US$13.75 ($12.75 seniors) for the museum plus an IMAX movie. Check www.vasc.org for further details.