Aviation History & the Air and Space Museum

In 1918, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, commanding the 94th Aero Squadron, the "Hat in the Ring" squadron, shot down a German observation balloon over France in his SPAD XIII. It was his 26th and last aerial victory, which made him America's leading ace of the First World War. The former race driver had enlisted only in 1917 as a driver for General Pershing's staff before talking his way into pilot training; he later received the Medal of Honor.

In 1909, J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, later Lord Brabazon of Tara, won a £1,000 prize from the Daily Mail by flying a one-mile closed circuit in his Short Biplane No. 2 at the Royal Aero Club field at Shellbeach on the Isle of Sheppey. He rounded a post half a mile out and landed beside the launching rail after 2 minutes 36½ seconds. Short Brothers, a balloon maker that had been building Wright Flyers under licence, designed the No. 2 with ailerons instead of wing-warping and powered it with a 60-horsepower Green four-cylinder engine driving two pusher propellers.

A reproduction of the map then-Lt. Col. David Deptula used in fall 1990 to plan strategic strikes across Iraq will introduce the Desert Storm section of the museum's Modern Military Aviation gallery on the Mall, which opens on Veterans Day, Nov. 11. Curator Michael Hankins chose a large-format panel because the original, still in Deptula's possession, is too fragile and large to display. The color-coded map, drawn in the "Black Hole" planning cell under Royal Saudi Air Force headquarters in Riyadh, marked air defenses, leadership, Scud launchers and the power grid; the section also carries an F-117 scale model and an interactive stealth display.

Why it matters: A docent at Udvar-Hazy can pair the panel with the combat F-117A "Overachiever" that went on display there this month.

The museum has published, for the first time, excerpts from a March 1992 oral history that space history curator Paul Ceruzzi recorded with Margaret Hamilton, who led the MIT Instrumentation Lab's software engineering for Apollo and died on Sept. 30 at 90. In it she recalls debugging by rolling paper tape down MIT's halls and choosing Apollo over another computing group by a coin toss. The tribute traces her path from weather-prediction code for Edward Lorenz to SAGE air defense to the Apollo 11 landing software, which shed lower-priority tasks to keep the descent going when alarms sounded.

The South Pacific WWII Museum on Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu, has recovered the remains of B-17E 41-9227, "Yankee Doodle Jr.," of the 11th Bomb Group's 431st Bomb Squadron, which crashed on takeoff from Bomber No. 1 airfield on Dec. 31, 1942, killing Capt. Jack Levy and 1st Lt. Robert Andrews. The wreckage had lain on private land for more than 80 years; the landowner donated it after negotiations led by museum chairman Bradley Wood, and crews cleared trees with chainsaws and lifted the engines, wing sections and tail with a crane. The museum will conserve and document the parts rather than rebuild the bomber.

Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome will fly its Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis replica about 1,250 miles from New York to Lakeland, Florida, in early November, to winter there and fly at SUN 'n FUN on April 14–19, 2027, ahead of the 100th anniversary of Lindbergh's Atlantic crossing on May 20–21. The replica, begun under founder Cole Palen and completed by Ken Cassens, who measured the original at the Smithsonian, first flew in December 2015. The Aerodrome chose to fly it rather than truck it to avoid the risks of disassembly.

Why it matters: The original Spirit of St. Louis hangs in the museum on the Mall, so visitors will hear about the centennial all spring.

The latest Forgotten Factories history follows Interstate Aircraft and Engineering of El Segundo, California, from 1937 through its exit from aircraft building in 1945. It built 574 Cadet two-seaters, including the 259 O-63/L-6 liaison versions for the Army Air Forces, and 195 TDR radio-controlled assault drones that the Navy flew against targets in the Pacific; Cornelia Fort was instructing in a Cadet over Honolulu when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. After the war the Cadet design passed to Call Aircraft and later Arctic Aircraft, and the company turned to components and appliances.