On a Wing and a Prayer

Spend a day at this museum, and you’ll leave with a new appreciation of naval aircraft—and the people who fly them.

by Melanie Radzicki McManus
photography by Anthony John Coletti and Courtland William

It’s not about the planes. So say the gray-haired men in smart navy jackets behind the information desk at Pensacola’s National Museum of Naval Aviation (NMNA). The men—generally retirees of the United States Navy, Coast Guard, or Marine Corps who are often war veterans and actually flew some of the museum’s aircraft—have a soft spot for the planes. There’s no doubt about that. But they say the museum is not about the aircraft; it’s about the people who flew them.

“This [museum is about] remembering who put their lives on the line,” says Jack Page, a Korean War veteran and NMNA tour guide. “Who stood between us and oblivion ... to preserve what we have here.”

The museum is on the grounds of the Pensacola Naval Air Station and is Florida’s most popular museum most years. More than 140 restored Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard aircraft lovingly are placed or suspended in its nearly three hundred thousand square feet (with other pieces currently undergoing restoration in the back hangar). With no glass enclosures or velvet ropes separating you from the collection, you’re able to stare down the snarling shark’s face painted on a World War II P40-B Tomahawk. Or touch the amazingly slim needle-nosed snout of a 1960s-era F11F-1 Tiger used by the Navy’s elite aviation demonstration team, the Blue Angels. Or even peer into the thirty-nine-foot-long airship control car of a 1950s K-47 and grasp the immense size of the cigar-shaped gas envelope that once lifted it gracefully into the sky.

George Young, a World War II veteran and NMNA volunteer, likes to show visitors what he considers one of the museum’s signature pieces—the gargantuan gray-hulled NC-4. Designed during World War I, the plane features a 126-foot wingspan and four 400-horsepower engines, which enabled it to fly from the United States to Europe in case marine warfare threatened Allied shipping lanes. The plane wasn’t finished and tested until 1919, when the war was over; it became the first plane to cross the Atlantic Ocean. “Technically, it’s only on loan from the Smithsonian [Institution],” Young chuckles, “but it’s staying right here.” It has to; it wouldn’t fit through the door.

Page worries too many people spend their entire visit on the museum’s main level and miss what lies just above on the mezzanine: cockpits once used to train pilots to operate their planes by touch (you can climb in them if you’d like), exhibits depicting a Solomon Islands outpost and a World War II aircraft-carrier hangar deck, displays on naval aviation forays into outer space, and a recreation of Pensacola’s 1943 Main Street. “If you go upstairs first,” Page suggests, “you can see all of those displays and still see all the planes on the floor below, too.”

One of the museum’s most popular spots is its restaurant, the Cubi Bar Cafe. The original Cubi Point Officers’ Club opened in the Philippines’ Subic Bay in the late 1950s at the Cubi Point Naval Air Station. The bar became the local hot spot for American naval aviators in the area. When the station closed in 1991, so did the Cubi Club. Shortly thereafter, Cubi Point’s commanding officer told Captain Bob Rasmussen, museum director, that he would send some of the club’s mementos. Rasmussen expected a few pieces of memorabilia, but he received dozens of boxes crammed with every table, chair, and handrail from the club. He also was shipped the bar itself, plus the hand-carved mahogany plaques presented to the Cubi Club by the hundreds of squadrons and other groups that had passed through the station. Rasmussen promptly created an exact replica of the famous bar that gives visitors who patronized the club an astonishing sense of déjà vu when they enter.

Rasmussen has been either in the Navy or working with the museum and its foundation for more than fifty years. Although he won’t point this out, the gallery of naval aircraft paintings on the mezzanine contains about fifteen of his watercolors—just one indication of how involved he is in all aspects of the museum. Still trim and spry at seventy-five, the former fighter pilot and Blue Angel says the museum’s World War II section contains its most significant pieces. “World War II is the period in which naval aviation really came into its own and became the most important part of the Navy,” he says, noting that prior to World War II the Navy was dominated by surface warfare, making the battleship its major vessel. “Back then, aircraft carriers were only seen as support vessels for battleships. After World War II, that reversed itself, and today most of the surface ships in the Navy are structured around the aircraft carrier.”

Visitors who drop by most Tuesday or Wednesday mornings can watch the Blue Angels practice. From the planes’ screaming takeoffs to their amazing aerobatic maneuvers and rumble-your-stomach flyovers, it is a performance not to be missed. After some practices, the Blue Angels answer questions and sign autographs. And if you miss the practice, the museum features an IMAX movie about them, plus flight-simulator rides that mimic some of their tricks and turns.

On a recent morning, small knots of visitors moved through the museum as the thrumming of aircraft taking off from nearby Forrest Sherman Field sounded. In the atrium (where four A-4 Skyhawks are suspended overhead in the famed Blue Angels’ diamond-shaped diving formation) a military retirement ceremony was being held. As the retiree was honored, John Hillin, a tour guide and former Marine, got a bit choked up.

“I’m volunteering ... because I want younger people to have a sense of appreciation for our freedom that was preserved by the men and women who flew for the Navy and Marine Corps,” Hillin explained. “Many gave the ultimate sacrifice in that they were killed in action. So while there are historical reasons for displaying these aircraft, there’s also a spiritual reason. This place serves as a memorial to the great Americans who gave so selflessly to help future generations.”