photographing war eagles

One of the things I miss about not living in southern New Mexico any more is the opportunity to visit the War Eagles Air Museum in Santa Teresa.



The dim light and a lot of planes in the museum's hangar made photography there an interesting challenge.



A few times each year, there are some opportunities to see the planes out in the daylight, and sometimes one or two are put in the air.



All of the planes on exhibit have undergone considerable expert restoration, and many are in flyable condition.



I had about as many old film cameras as there were planes in the museum, and I used most of them there. The P-40 was shot with my Kodak Monitor.



Most of the collection are military planes from WWII and later, but there are also some nice civilian aircraft from earlier times like this great old Waco.

Albert's Legacy

I renewed my membership today at The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. For $25 I get unlimited visits for a year, which seems like a great bargain, even if it were only for the great collection of Atomic kitsch.



What really interests me there, of course, is the small collection of old planes in the museum's back yard.



Up front are an F-105 and an A-7.



The B-29 and B-52 bombers were trucked over in pieces from the near-by Kirtland Air Base about a year ago and just recently reassembled.



While there is an over-all emphasis on Twentieth-Century nuclear technology development, the museum is mostly a memorial to the Cold War years. Having spent half my life in those chilly times, I feel a strong sense of familiarity among the exhibits. I wish they would dump the drippingly nostalgic WWII ballads that are played constantly in the background. There can't be many visitors anymore for whom such tunes have real relevance, and they really don't fit the museum's time-frame theme well. Elvis and the Beatles would really seem more appropriate, though I'd probably tire of them just as fast.

Albuquerque's claim on aviation history

Quite a lot of aviation history is housed in Albuquerque museums. The city's Art Museum, for instance, has two superlative collections related to aviation, and many examples of them can be viewed on line. The Museum's Flickr set of photos on the Albuquerque Municipal Airport contains a look at the style of commercial aviation at mid-Century that is stunning in its quality.



A lot of the pictures look like they were commissioned with promotional intentions, but the realities of the times they portray come through just fine. Most of the airliners are DC-3s and Constellations. There is also a glimpse of the adjacent Kirtland Army Airfield in which the photographer has captured no less than eight B-29 bombers.



Of even more historical interest is the set of photos which is currently on exhibit at the museum, the Frank Speakman Collection. The selection shown on line at Flickr covers most of the life of the first Albuquerque Airport, from the time it was established by Speakman in 1928 until it was taken over by the the Air Corps near the onset of WWII.



Right from the start, two of the early commercial airlines flew Ford and Fokker Tri-motors in and out of Oxnard Field, as it was known shortly after its opening. As time went on, just about every major air celebrity passed through Oxnard including Lucky Lindy and (unlucky)Amelia Earhart. Planes in the great air races of the 1930s such as the Bendix also frequently made Albuquerque a stop on their way, including this magnificent Wedell-Williams Special in 1934.



The Google Earth image below shows the east end of the main field of the present-day Sunport. At the top-center of the picture it is possible to discern some remnants of the original Albuquerque Airport as it was first developed by Speakman. The diagonal track going up to the left is the smaller of the two runways; it intercepted the mile-long main runway at its eastern extreme.



The image below shows a closer view of the location of the old airport; it provides a perspective similar to a high quality aerial photo made of the airport in 1931 from what I would judge to be about eight hundred feet above the ground. The photo is not one included in the Flickr set.



While visiting the exhibit yesterday at the museum, I made a quick sketch of the early aerial photo showing the position of the runways in relation to the mountains east of Albuquerque, as well as the main airport buildings. It looks to me like they were located right near that major T-intersection at the lower left.



It would be fun to superimpose an image of the photo on the Google view, or on a current aerial from the same perspective. No doubt many other features of the early installation could be identified.