Warbird Information Exchange

quote "I think the comparisons between the capsule and the steel from the Twin Rowers are misleading. We are talking about the actual object that these men that died in, in its entirety. "

How do you feel then about certain warbirds that have suffered a fatal crash but not completely destroyed, and are being rebuilt to flying status?

The two that come to mind are the CAF Red Tail P-51 and the 2 seat Spitfire PV202(IIRC). There may be others. I know for a fact in the CAF P-51 case the family of the pilot has said to restore it and fly it. That would continue its mission and be the best way to honor him. But what of the Spifire? Do you consider it macabre that it will be flying again considering that lives were lost in it?

I can't imagine that the capsule would be put on display in a blackend and chared condition. As mentioned above it was disassembled and would most likely be cleaned up and made presentable. I would like to see a dedicated display for it, one were the solemnity could be maintained. For example not on display at the NASM smack in the middle of the main gallery where everyone off the street walks in for a quick look and pictures and then leaves.

Pete

You can look at this a few different ways. The USS Arizona and the Twin Towers are more "war memorials" than they are anything else.......

The Apollo 1 Capsule, Challenger, etc, are all wreckage from accidents.

While the warbird industry makes a fair amount of money from restoration of wrecked aircraft in which people have gotten killed, and more money is made fromt hose aircraft at airshows (which never seems to trickle down to the aircraft owners, but someone makes something) and there never seems to be a shortage of pilots willing to sit in the seat where the last person there died............. Restoration to flight seems somewhat different to me than making a memorial out of scrap iron. It also seems that those who knew the pilot, want to put it out of their minds by glossing over it, ignoring what may have caused the accident "out of respect to the pilot and his family, then trying to restore the airplane to further remove the tragedy that occurred........ If you don't know the pilot, then, the crash becomes more of a curosity.

Memorials seem to ignore what the dead person went through and only seem to try to glorify it in some way. Watch Apollo 13 the movie, there is a split second (I recall) on the Apollo 1 fire where a glove comes near the window as burns, trying to get out. I think that 5 seconds of film is a better memorial than anything you can do with the wreckage.

If you want to see Apollo Capsules, there a lot of them out there. I saw Apollo 15 at the USAFM in Dayton yesterday. There isn't a real need for another "restored" Apollo Capsule in a museum. There were people walking by it who never looked at it. They didn't have a clue what it was, where it went, or what it did. Look at one close, its small, cramped and you had to live in there for 2 weeks with 2 other guys. Its not too darn comfortable, built by the lowest bidder, complex, crude (by today's standards) and you also had to fly it to the moon and come home.

In Sept 1994, USAir Flight 427 screwed itself into the ground (no better term since they never really figured out what happened) in Pittsburgh. My father had been a mechanic for USAir for 34 years and spent the last 10+ year working on B737s. He was asked to look at it to work on the reassembly. He came home the first night and told me "I worked on those planes for years and the only part I could identify was the tires...." Not much left, not anything that "tourists" would want to see............

I saw the "Titanic" exhibit in Chicago one year on the way to OSH. There were a lot of items picked off the bottom of the Ocean, and even a piece of steel probably 8' X 20' or so. You know, it was all simply a bunch of junk and garage sale items as far as I was concerned. It was all hyped up and didn't reach the levels the promoters claimed it would.... What got me about the Titanic was something that Robert Ballard wrote when he went to it. He said he saw a lot of pairs of shoes, near each other. Then he realized that lying on the seabed were shoes that the dead had been wearing and their bodies had decomposed, leaving shoes (which for some reason, survived). Every time he saw 2 shoes, he knew that he was looking at a place where there had been a body.............

There is no way to present wreckage of the spacecraft in a dignified manner that can convey any message. Maybe to make it popular, its time to display the autopsy photos of the charred remains of the Astronauts or for Shuttles, photos of pieces of the bodies. Probably the biggest might be finger sized, I'm not sure how that would help.

I know our government well enough to know that displaying this wreckage may well hurt future funding for space exploration, and cost some of them their jobs, hence maybe its not a good idea to do it............ Nothing can be gained from displaying the wreckage

That capsule has been locked away for 40 years, let it stay and let the dead rest in peace......

Mark H

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Fly safe or you get to meet me .......

Mark

you make some good points regarding the remains of Apollo 1 capsule.

I as well was somewhat disappointed when I saw the Titanic exhibit locally last summer. However, there was a plexi case with a dozen or so 1/4" holes drilled on each side, and inside were several perfume sample vials (glass, about 2" x .25" iirc, with a cork cap) recovered from the wreck. These had been the possession of a gent in the perfume business who had gone to Europe to collect some samples of raw materials to bring home. If you leaned close to the case you could smell the scents as clear as day, and it kinda blew me away that these had been sitting on the ocean floor for the better part of a century, and now molecules of them were floating into my nose.

That part did more to connect me to the ship that anything else ever has.

cheers

greg v.

All good points but...

What about the Confederate Submarine H L Hunley? Should that be locked away as well? Men died in that...

Apollo 1 is an historic artifact - a complete Block One Command Module. What is clear, is that it needs to be preserved...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

US Air 427 crashed minutes from my house. In college they took us to the crash site and turned on a metal detector, and it went crazy. That was a good 8 years after the crash. Oh, and pieces of 427 are on display in the Hienz History Center along with parts of Flight 93. There are parts of the WTC on display in several museums. So why is it wrong to display the CM from Apollo 1? Keep in mind that hurting the families is not a consideration, because they want to display it. A rather rude reality needs to be faced. We are stuck with this stuff. We have Shuttle parts and the CM. We can't through them away(that would be wrong), and locking them away is not a fitting tribute. Also for the record not one person here has said that we need to display pictures of charred bodies. I find that reference rather offensive. We are talking about a tasteful display to honor them, not a carnival siade show. And for the record the bodies were not chareed on Apollo I. The suits preserved the bodies. So let's not paint a more disturbing photo than actually existed.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Mustangdriver, I see you're pretty passionate about this one, that's fine, your heart's in the right place, but here may be another example for you to ponder. Is Dale Earnhardt's #3 car (that he was killed in while driving in the Daytona 500) displayed anywhere?, I'm not sure, but I would like to believe not. I really don't think anyone with a passion, or no passion, for racing would really want to see this particular car. At least not for a long, long time. The Hunley is a very old artifact and probably all close relatives to the crew are long gone as well. Maybe in a hundred years when the dust has completely settled, then Apollo 1 can be displayed for all to see, but IMHO, I just believe it's still much too early to display anywhere. I'm sure there are many honorable memorials to the crew today that would satisfy anyone who has an interest in their memories. Give it some more time, It still seems to be an open wound for many today.

Part of the problem with the display of the Apollo 15 Command Module is the diplay itself. As much as I like the NMUSAF and think they do an outstanding job, the Apollo 15 CM just sits there with very little to attract attention. The one thing that would really draw the visitor is the interior, but the hatch is closed so you can't take a look inside (all other CM's have open hatches covered with plexiglass). There is a reason for this. The interior of the Apollo 15 CM had it's instrument panels "canned" for the Apollo 16 CM which in turn had it's panels taken for the Apollo-Soyuz CM. It's a long story but something needs to be done to restore the Apollo 15 CM to it's proper configuration. The Kansas Cosmosphere is the best place to tackle it (there has been a discussion on CollecSpace.com about it).
Beyond the interior, Apollo 15 was the first mission to conduct a deep space EVA (Al Wordon). None of this is depicted in the displays but it is important space history. Apollo 15 is also generally considered the most scientifically beneficial of the six moon landings with Dave Scott and Jim Irwin landing among spectacular mountans at an enormous canyon at Hadley Rille. Very little of this is depicted for the visitor. I was disappointed with the display and can see why people would walk right by...

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"Everyone wants to live here (New Jersey), evidenced by the fact that it has the highest population per capita in the U.S..."

At the time of the tradegy, I was a lot younger and watched it unfold on TV. I also seem to recall LIFE Magazine doing a photo-spread that included several pictures of the inside of the burnt-out command module. The Nation grieved together. They are our National Heros, at least Heros from my day and age, when heros were real, and not some hoped-up singer on drugs yelling his head off and calling it music or some high priced sport player crying that he can't live on 10 million dollars a year. They took the chance to explore the space frontier and paid the ultimate sacrifice. I also recall a book from NASA on space exploration that also included a picture of the inside of the burnt-out command module along with a message that Grissom, I think, wrote that basicly said that the benifits of space exploration was well worth the risks. ( I believe that the message was to be opened in the event of his death occuring on a mission if I remember correctly). If I remember correctly, there was no out-cry of the pictures being in bad taste.

Should the command module be part of a memorial? In my opinion, yes.
Restored to see inside...in my opinion, probably not.

I went to Arlington last summer. Most people on the shuttle bus that I was on walked right past the memorial to the shuttle pilots and the memorial to the Marine and Airforce personel that died trying to free the hostages to get to the MAINE memorial. In my experience, most people need something "real" to be able to associate it with a happening (hey, I have a 17 year old son...........) A stone somewhere in a cemetary just doesn't cut it. It has to be something directly associated with an event in order for it to be etched into their head.

My lovely wife of almost 24 years was burried exactly two years ago today. My son, who was 15 at the time, helped me pick out the stone and the prayer on the stone. If you ask him today, he doesn't know what the carvings on the stone are or the prayer is, but he can tell you that there is an Irish flag (she was verrrrrry Irish) in the flower urn. It is something that he can directly associate with his mother.

We need our true heros to be remembered for the risks they were willing to take to make us a better people and a stronger nation.

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May all your bent wings be F2G Corsairs!

As for the Apollo 15 display, all I can say is that there are changes in the works for it. It's current display has always been temporary. With the new building will come a more fitting tribute to the CM. At this time options are being looked into for the restoration of the panel. I will say as a volunteer that we see alot of interest in the Apollo Command Module.
As for Dale Earnhart, his wrecked number 3 car was on display in a memorial so that fans could come an pay tribute to him. There people left flowers, and messages.
If we wait 100 years there might be nothing left to display. Is that what we should do? Wait until anyone that knew Guss, Roger, or Ed are gone, and then make a memorial? I just don't think that is right. I am passionate about it to say the least.
And if the case is that this is an aircraft someone dies in, we don't want to se it, then we better open the doors of that storage facility and put the red tail P-51 in there along with that Spit. These aircraft are being restored to fly again, and no one has a problem with that, but simply displaying the CM is somehow wrong. The red tail is being restored to fly to honor the pilot, and I agree with it. Would pushing the redtail wreckage into a building somewhere be doing the same? Is that what we should do with it? Why don't we wait 100 years before the P-51 gets to fly?

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Very well said, and I am sorry for your loss.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I"ll post my last opinion on this subject. If it was a close family member of mine that perished in that module, I wouldn't ever want to see it again, even if my great, great grandfather died in the Hunley, I wouldn't want to see it either. What do I say to people? ... "see that CM?, my uncle died in that thing" ... how wonderful that would be. Nope, not for me. Not interested. Photos of it, a replica of it possibly, but not that contraption that actually killed a close family member. As for the P-51C and Spit., scrap them too if it were my close family member who died flying it, I could care less about the airplanes and who would be upset about their loss, it killed my family member, scrap it!!! and burn it!!! .... You think about that, you ask yourself if you want the car that killed your father in a museum for people to gawk at and say .... "Look, he snapped his neck sitting right there" ... forget it, there's a million ways to memorialize the lost and fallen. You don't need everything to be displayed. Again I get your point, but do you really get my point? ....

Here's another analogy for you ..... My brother's killed in a P-51 Mustang. The brother's gone, the airplane exists and can be restored. People who want to save the airplane come up and say ... "No!! don't burn it!!! ... it can be saved and can fly again, don't destroy it!!! .... it'll fly again as a memorial to the loss of your brother ..... negative, it burns and burns now, you want a Mustang to fly? find another one, this one burns as a memorial to the loss of my brother. .... You want to show up at an airshow and see the P-51 that killed your brother? .... not me. especially when the people who are really looking at it really could care less about your loss. They just have an interest in the airplane. And believe me, in time that is what will happen. Maybe not with the CM, but many other items.

That is very well accepted Hellcat, but remember that the family WANTS to display this in a fiiting way. If it were the other way around, it would be different.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Seems not all agree with the way to "display in a fitting way"

Hellcat, that is a bit out of context. What that article is about is keeping the spacecraft in storage. He is against it, and said he would rather see it placed in a tomb with other artifacts rather then where it is. Betty Grissom always supported placing it on display. She is also the backing force in getting it named Apollo I rather than 204B which was it's internal designator.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Let the families decide. That's fine with me, but who am I? no one ....