The Southern Museum of Flight is a unique aviation museum located near the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in Birmingham, Alabama. It is a place for people of all ages interested in aviation history and aircraft. Open since 1983, here you will learn about the beginning of flight from the Wright Brothers Flyer to the sleek SR-71, Blackbird. The size of the bowtie-shaped museum is a bit deceptive, but the 75,000-square-foot building houses over 100 aircraft, ranging from the early days of flight to newer experimental planes. It is literally chock full of every kind of airplane you can imagine.
With nearly sixty thousand visitors each year, the museum can be a busy destination, especially during the school year. Education is at the core of the museum, and two-thirds of the sixty thousand annual visitors are school-age children. They have a dedicated teaching area for school tours that can accommodate one hundred children. The staff of ten and the group of dedicated volunteers make the museum a centerpiece for Birmingham.
During my visit, I spoke with both Wayne Novy, the Director of Operations and Curator of the collection, and Brian Barsanti, Ph.D., who has been the Executive Director since 2014. Both are former military personnel and are dedicated to preserving flight history. Novy retired from the Air Force and worked with Frank Borman, the commander of Apollo 8. Barsanti is a Coast Guard reservist and educator who teaches at both UAB and Huntington College.
TUSKEGEE AIRMEN
In the main hangar, we began our tour with an impressive exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen, featuring short videos and artifacts from members of the unit.
One display focuses on First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s visit to the airmen’s training facility. To show her support of the Tuskegee Airmen, the First Lady flew with Alfred Anderson on a short flight.
The Russian MI-24 Hind helicopter dominates the main hangar space. This large helicopter transported military personnel, equipment, and supplies.
TUSKEGEE AIRMEN LAKE MURRAY RESTORATION
Continuing with the history of the Tuskegee Airmen, there is a large display about a B-25 that was raised from Lake Murray in South Carolina in 2005, where it crashed in April 1945 during a training exercise. This is one of the very few remaining planes flown by the Tuskegee Airmen. Currently, only a small section of the salvaged plane is on display, but the volunteers and staff are working in the restoration shop to restore the entire aircraft for display.
Both the Korean War and Vietnam War are remembered through two large static displays, video presentations, and numerous artifacts donated to the museum.
HISTORY OF FLIGHT
We continued to the next wing to explore the beginnings of flight with the Wright Flyer and displays of early aircraft, including a Huff-Daland crop-duster biplane used by the Delta Air Corp., a Fokker D7 flown in World War I, and a Model T and a 1903 Cadillac.
The display cases contain artifacts that document moments in the evolution of aircraft. From the early escapades of wing walking to pilot Eugene Pyle’s first take off from the USS Birmingham in 1910 in a Curtis D model byplane, the stories that are told are awe-inspiring.
EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT
On entering the experimental aircraft hangar, you will find every shape and size of airplane imaginable. These are mostly handmade crafts built from the ground up by their owners. The EAA planes fill every nook and cranny of the hangar. When an owner donates an aircraft to the museum, the craft often lands at the nearby Birmingham airport and is transported by trailer to its new home.
WOMEN IN AVIATION
Women in Aviation are featured in a display of photographs by Carolyn Russo that depicts 17 contemporary women pilots.
RESTORATION EFFORTS
We were fortunate to visit the museum’s restoration shop, where they are working on a T-21 unmanned drone used to capture high-resolution images of the Soviet Union.
The craft was operated by the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), and the program ended in 1972. It was preprogrammed to fly, then ditch cameras and crash. Then, a C-130 was tasked to pick up the ditched cameras. Barsanti likens it to the Wile E. Coyote school of reconnaissance flight. In addition to restoring aircraft, the staff and volunteers build wind tunnels and display cases.
BLACKBIRD
Back inside, we visited the SR-71 Blackbird exhibit. A static display of this magnificent craft is located two blocks from the museum, along with many other planes. The custom-made flight suits worn by the pilots are more akin to spacesuits because of the pilots’ attitudes. In 1990, Ed Yeilding, a pilot from Florence, Alabama, made the last Blackbird flight from Los Angeles to DC in sixty-seven minutes, fifty-four seconds, flying at times two thousand miles an hour. At that speed, he said, it is hard to tell the separation of the Earth. Try that on Delta sometime.
https://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2016/10/alabama_pilot_remembers_flying.html
Near the Blackbird exhibit, enormous handcrafted models of the USS Birmingham and USS Enterprise are housed in large display cases. Both models were built from scratch in a volunteer’s garage and took eighteen months to complete.
CIA EXHIBIT
To conclude our tour, we reviewed the “CIA exhibit” in the museum’s main conference area. This exhibit features paintings of aircraft, mostly in combat situations, and includes several planes on display at the museum. A brief written background about the scene accompanies each painting or artifact. The exhibit was recreated with the CIA’s permission. One interesting story happened during a tour of the exhibit when a gentleman remarked that he had something to donate regarding the Fall of Saigon. It turns out the visitor had been at the Embassy and had recovered an official seal.
The Southern Museum of Flight is an exceptional and exciting place to celebrate Alabama’s role in aviation history. The museum also houses the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame. The museum is just beginning its capital campaign to fund the site transfer. Its new home will be on a twenty-four-acre site near the Barber Motorsports Museum, which is expected to open in 2020.
