Aviation History & the Air and Space Museum

The California Science Center in Los Angeles announced on 28 October the unveiling of its Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, with 100 interactive exhibits and rare artifacts. The center's May release, read for context, describes a four-floor, 200,000-square-foot addition built around the space shuttle Endeavour standing upright in launch configuration, a Korean Air aviation gallery with the forward 70 feet of a Boeing 747-400, and suspended aircraft including a Grumman F11F-1 Tiger, a Convair F-106A and a Harrier T.4. The opening date in the new announcement was not confirmed from a readable copy.

The Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum placed the final steel beam of its new 130,600-square-foot building on 21 October at the Orange County Great Park in Irvine, the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro; it will show more than 40 Marine Corps aircraft from the First World War to Afghanistan and is due to open in 2028. Restorations under way include a B-25J Mitchell, an F-8J Crusader, a Stinson OY-1 and an A-6E Intruder, and an ex-Saudi F-5E is being painted as a VMFT-401 aggressor. Finished projects include CH-46E Sea Knight "Lady Ace 09," which lifted Ambassador Graham Martin out of Saigon on 30 April 1975.

The National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, Georgia, says it served as a historical resource for JIMMY, a film with KJ Apa as James Stewart that opens in theaters on 6 November. The museum provided photographs, records and firsthand accounts of Stewart's service with the Eighth Air Force's 2nd Air Division, where he flew B-24 Liberator missions over Europe; director Aaron Burns credited Stewart's flight logs and the museum's photographs for the film's period detail.

On 29 October 1963 the Canadair CL-41, designated CT-114 Tutor, entered Royal Canadian Air Force service as its side-by-side jet trainer. Begun as a Canadair private venture, it was ordered a year after flight testing started, and 212 were built from 1963 to 1966, powered by a single Orenda-built J85 of 2,650 lbf; Malaysia flew 20 of a ground-attack version, the CL-41G Tebuan. The Tutor left general training in 2000 but has flown with the 431 Squadron Snowbirds demonstration team since 1971, with a life-extension program meant to carry it toward 2030.