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If the bird that had this bird’s-eye view of AirVenture in 2018 flew
by again this year, all she saw was an empty field. A scrapbook of
fly-ins past (p. 62) may console all those who had hoped to attend.
FEATURES
20 28 34
Cover: Russian
The Moon’s Gold SMITHSONIAN: HER STORY WORLD WAR II: VJ DAY 75
photographer
The Apollo astronauts found The Right to Fly and Candy, Food, Home, Kirill Mushak
the moon to be desolate and Fight Thanx shows a MiG-31’s
Jeannie Flynn didn’t want hard underbelly
dead, but if these scientists A photo of POWs at war’s
special treatment. She just loaded with four
are right, there’s a fortune to end in the Pacific touches us long-range R-33
be made there. wanted to fly a fighter. in ways words can’t. missiles.
BY MARK STRAUSS BY MORGAN SMITH BY CORY GRAFF
40 28 48 DEPARTMENTS
Secret Mission for an Satellite Rescue 02 Viewport
Old MiG About 3,000 dead satellites 06 Letters
It’s F-15 fast and carries a orbit Earth. Thanks to this
08 Up to Speed
big stick.The West is again new spacecraft, no others
warily eyeing the MiG-31. need to die. 18 At the
Museum
BY CRAIG MELLOW BY MICHAEL BEHAR
70 I Was
There
56 62 A harrowing
trip home.
The Japanese Voices of Oshkosh
Lindberghs Missing something? If you’re
72 Reviews 08
CONNOR MADISON/EAA
In the 1930s, several ocean- one of the tens of thousands 76 Preview

crossing flights carried a who head to Oshkosh, 78 Contributors Up to Speed
clear message, but the world Wisconsin every July, here 80 One More
The SpaceX
didn’t listen. are a few memories to fill Crew Dragon
Thing
gets it right.
BY KEN SCOTT this summer’s void.
airspacemag.com AIR & SPACE 1

VIEWPORT
From the Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum
A Very Big Milestone by Ellen Stofan
In the spring of 2003, con-

struction was nearing completion
at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center
ahead of our grand opening on the
centennial of the Wright brothers’ first
flight that December. Almost finished
and completely empty, the Center, in
Chantilly, Virginia, was already a sight
to behold—hundreds of thousands of
square feet of polished concrete, with
soaring, 10-story rafters supporting a
structure designed to encompass the
scope and ambition of the first century
of human flight.
But the first artifact moved into the
Center wasn’t the stately Concorde or
the sleek Blackbird. It was a humble Piper
Cub—a tiny, yellow trainer monoplane.
It sat, in the words of curators Mike
Neufeld and Alex Spencer in National
Air and Space Museum: An Autobiography, In April 1965, reached a similar milestone in the transformation of our
“alone, unarmed, and unafraid” in the engineers install flagship building on the National Mall. After several years
five 1.5-million-
middle of the vast hangar. of work, and many years of planning, the first artifact has
pound-thrust F-1
Although it wasn’t history’s first or rocket engines on been moved into our first new gallery.
fastest, the Cub was an inspired choice a Saturn V stage But instead of the modest Piper Cub, we are celebrating the
to symbolically lead our Museum into for a static test. installation of the mighty F-1 rocket engine that powered the
a new era—more men and women Saturn V and with it the entire Apollo program. The Apollo
missions will become the centerpiece of our Destination Moon
gallery, set to open with our first new exhibits in 2022. The
years of preparation and the care that went into moving the
THE APOLLO MISSIONS WILL BE nine-ton engine reflect the thoughtful, meticulous approach
THE CENTERPIECE OF A NEW that we are taking in reimagining every facet of our institution.
GALLERY SET TO OPEN IN 2022. This milestone marks a midway point. We have worked
hard to get this far, and though more hard work lies ahead
of us, our dream of a new National Air and Space Museum
learned to fly in Piper Cubs than in any is beginning to take shape.
other aircraft in history. Much of our
■ ELLEN STOFAN IS THE JOHN AND ADRIENNE MARS DIRECTOR OF THE
collection is unique or close to it—for NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM.
having transformed whole industries,
economies, or fields of exploration. The
Piper Cub transformed individual lives.
As our curators know well, would-be
innovators and explorers find inspiration
in countless ways—and many found their
wings in that simple two-seat airplane.
NASA
As you will read on p. 18, we have
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Editor Linda Musser Shiner Art Director Ted Lopez Senior Editor Tony Reichhardt Departments Editor Mark
Strauss Senior Associate Editors Rebecca Maksel, Diane Tedeschi Associate Editors Chris Klimek, Zach Rosenberg
Photography and Illustrations Editor Caroline Sheen Researcher Roger A. Mola Founding Editor George C. Larson
Contributing Editors Roger Bilstein, William E. Burrows, Tom Crouch, Ed Darack, David DeVorkin, Arielle
Emmett, John Fleischman, Daniel Ford, David Freed, Greg Freiherr, Dan Hagedorn, R. Cargill Hall, Richard
Hallion, Jim Hansen, Gregg Herken, Eric Long, Stephen Maran, Laurence Marschall, Ted Maxwell, Marshall
Michel, Ron Miller, Brian Nicklas, James Oberg, Chad Slattery, Marcia Smith, John Sotham, Stephan Wilkinson
Editorial editors@si.edu website airspacemag.com Subscriptions: (800) 513-3081
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
SECRETARY Lonnie G. Bunch III Madden, Mr. Gregory L. McAdoo, Mr. James C. Murray, Ms. Eren A.
JOHN AND ADRIENNE MARS DIRECTOR, NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM Ozmen, Mr. H. Ross Perot Jr., Mr. David M. Tolley, Mr. Steuart Walton,
Ellen R. Stofan Mr. Paul R. Wood
SMITHSONIAN BOARD OF REGENTS: Chancellor The Chief Justice of EMERITUS MEMBERS: Mr. James Albaugh, Mr. Ronald W. Allen, Mrs.
the United States Chair Mr. David M. Rubenstein VICE CHAIR Mr. Steve Anne B. Baddour, Mrs. Agnes M. Brown, Mr. Armando C. Chapelli, Jr., Mr.
Case MEMBERS: The Vice President of the United States, Ex Officio Max C. Chapman, Jr., Mr. Frank A. Daniels, Jr., Mr.Edsel B. Ford II, Mr.
Appointed by the President of the Senate Hon. John Boozman, Hon. Stuart L. Fred, Mr. Morton Funger, Mr. Kenneth E. Gazzola, Mr. S. Taylor
Linda Hall Daschle, Hon. Patrick J. Leahy, Hon. David Perdue Appointed Glover, Mr. Randall A. Greene, Mr. James M. Guyette, Mr. Thomas W.
by the Speaker of the House Hon. Tom Cole, Hon. Sam Johnson, Hon. Haas, Mr. Ralph D. Heath, Mr. Shephard W. Hill, Mr. David R. Hinson, Mr.
Doris Matsui Appointed by Joint Resolution of Congress Hon. Barbara David C. Hurley, Mr. Robert L. James, Mr. Clayton M. Jones, Mr. David
M. Barrett, Mr. John Fahey, Mr. Roger W. Ferguson Jr., Mr. Michael L. Joyce, Mr. Rodney R. Lewis, Mr. Steven R. Loranger, Capt. James A.
Govan, Dr. Risa J. Lavizzo-Mourey, Mr. Michael M. Lynton, Mr. John W. Lovell, USN (Ret.), Mrs. Adrienne Bevis Mars, Mr. T. Allan McArtor, Mr.
McCarter Jr. Bruce R. McCaw, Mr. Jameson J. McJunkin, Ms. Linda A. Mills, Mr. Robert
NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM BOARD: Mr. William S. Ayer, Mr. A. Milton, Mr. Robert J. Mittman, Mr. Thomas G. Morr, Mr. Lloyd “Fig”
Daniel A. Baker, Honorable Marion C. Blakey, Mr. Mark L. Burns, Mr. Newton, Mr. Jack J. Pelton, Mr. Roger D. Percy, Mr. Robert W. Pittman,
Neil D. Cohen, Ms. Karen M. Dahut, Honorable Linda Hall Daschle, Mr. John L. Plueger, Mr. Thomas F. Pumpelly, Jon A. Reynolds, Ph.D., Dr.
Mr. Stanley A. Deal, Mr. Scott C. Donnelly, Mr. Mark B. Dunkerley, Ms. Donald B. Rice, Mr. David P. Storch, Dr. Richard G. Sugden, Dr. Frederick
Michele A. Evans, Mr. Tom Gentile, III, Ms. Dawne S. Hickton, Mr. Allan W. Telling, Mr. Charles B. Thornton, Mr. Steven VanRoekel, Ms. Patty
M. Holt, Mr. Thomas W. Horton, Dr. Christopher T. Jones, Mr. Gary C. Wagstaff
Kelly, Mr. C. Jeffrey Knittel, Mr. Roger A. Krone, Ms. Meredith Siegfried
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LETTERS
How Did They Do That?

I was intrigued by your
story “The First Air Force
One” (June/July 2020). I saw
Columbine II in July 1955 at
Keflavik Air Station, Iceland,
when I was a first lieu-
tenant in the 57th Fighter-
Interceptor Squadron flying
F-89Cs.
President Eisenhower was
returning to the States after
a Big Four summit meeting
in Geneva. He took a tour of
the base, had some lunch, and
made ready to depart. I flew as a passenger in a Unexpected Guest
It was then that I saw Constellation at least four The photo of the red
something that I have never times in the early 1950s. McDonnell Aircraft
seen before or since. As the Meals were served on a tray XTD2D-1 Katydid drone
cabin door closed, all four placed on a pillow in your (“One More Thing,” June/
engines started simultane- lap; very elegant in its own July 2020) reminded me of
ously and Columbine II started way. President Eisenhower a family camping trip in the
taxiing immediately. had good taste in his choice 1950s. As we neared the
I later talked to four-en- of airplanes. Delaware shore, we could
gine pilots who stated it LOUIS ARATA see puffs of black smoke from
couldn’t be done. There must Upper Darby, Pennsylvania anti-aircraft fire out over
have been a humongous aux- the ocean.
iliary power unit on board. Fantasy Tweet Upgrade When we reached the
Perhaps Mr. Asche, who is I really enjoyed Heather campground, a crowd was
helping to rewire the aircraft, Penney’s article “My Duel gathered, staring at a tent
can find some odd wiring to with a Tweet” (June/July that had been smashed flat.
the engines that will back 2020). Coming from a Lying on the tent was a
me up. civilian background with shot-up red drone, testament
GEOFF CHAPMAN several Cessna models to some accurate gunnery.
Camden, Maine in my logbook, I quickly Fortunately, no one was in
decided the T-37 was the the tent at the time of the
best Cessna I’d ever flown. crash.
If I was a rich guy, I’d own After a while, some men
a Tweet and fly it often. If I in uniforms appeared, word-
LET US HEAR FROM YOU! was really rich, I’d have some lessly loaded the wreckage
smart people figure out how onto a truck, and hauled it
Tell us about your experience, and send us a photo.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: @airspacemag to put a pair of little Williams away. I wonder if it was a
Email: editors@si.edu. All emails must include your full turbofans on it. Katydid.
name, mailing address, and daytime phone number. BRAD TILLOTSON CHARLES BATES
Write to us at Letters, Air & Space/Smithsonian, Loveland, Ohio Portland, Oregon
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Please type or print clearly. You must include your full Air & Space is not responsible for the return of unsolicited materials. Never
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copies. All letters selected for publication are edited. We reserve the right to
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IN THE SKY
IN SPACE
IN THE NEWS
BY MARK STRAUSS
AIR & SPACE
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR

A Pair of Firsts
for SpaceX
Everyone who watched the liftoff of the SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space
Center on May 30 (far left) could feel that history
was being made.
This was the first time in nearly a decade that
astronauts had launched into space from U.S. soil.
It was also the first time they flew aboard a launch
vehicle and a spacecraft (the Crew Dragon) that
were manufactured and owned by a private space
transportation company. Astronaut Doug Hurley—
who, along with Bob Behnken, is now aboard the
International Space Station—seemed to appreciate
the significance of the moment when, seconds
before ignition, he invoked the words of America’s
first astronaut, Alan Shepard: “Light this candle.”
Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A,
which was built to handle Saturn V rockets and
later reconfigured for the space shuttle program.
But both Hurley and Behnken, who are veteran
shuttle astronauts, say this trip into orbit was much
smoother than their previous ones. The shuttle’s
two solid rocket boosters made for a rough ride
during the first couple of minutes, before switching
to liquid propellant. By contrast, the Falcon 9’s first
stage comprised nine Merlin engines that burn a
mixture of kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen.
Less than a day after launch, the Dragon capsule
docked flawlessly—and automatically—at the
International Space Station (near left). Unlike space
shuttle orbiters, which were manually controlled for
docking, the Dragon is equipped with a system that
requires no input from astronauts.
The mission will end later this month when
the astronauts return to Earth aboard the capsule,
which they have named “Endeavour,” in honor of
SPACEX (2)
the space shuttle that both astronauts first flew on.
August 2020 AIR & SPACE 9

GE Aviation has shipped its first engine
for NASA’s X-59, seen here at the GE
Riverworks aviation facility in
Massachusetts. The F414-100 is a new
single-engine variant of its fighter jet
engine, the F414-400.
accelerate beyond Mach 1, the X-59

will use the F414-100 turbofan—pro-
viding 22,000 pounds of thrust—which
is adapted from the engine that pow-
ers the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet.
“A single-engine aircraft is attractive
because it has a smaller footprint on the
airplane,” says Ray Castner, the NASA
propulsion lead for the X-59. “It takes
up less space. Sonic boom is all about
volume and shaping.” Another signif-
icant aspect of the engine design is its
placement on top of the airplane, so that
the delta wings block shock waves from
the nacelle from reaching the ground.
Meanwhile, significant progress has
also been made on the X-59’s frame at
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. “All
A Kinder, Gentler the major structure of the fuselage is

complete,” says Jay Brandon, the X-59
Sonic Boom chief engineer at NASA.“It’s in the pro-

cess of getting its skins put on.”
Though it looks futuristic, some pieces
NASA’s X-59 supersonic research of the X-59 are hand-me-downs—land-
aircraft is coming together for its ing gear from an Air Force F-16, a con-
trol stick from an F-117 stealth fighter,
maiden flight next year. and a cockpit canopy from a NASA T-38
trainer. “The big innovation on this air-
Sonic booms proved to be a bust for Artist’s conception of the plane is the shape,” says Brandon. “So, it’s
commercial supersonic aircraft, which X-59 QueSST, featuring an basically a cost and schedule mitigation
were banned from flying over the conti- elongated fuselage that is to try to use things that have already been
designed to reduce sonic
nental United States in 1973. But NASA’s booms.
there. It’s not inventing things we don’t
newest X-plane, the X-59 QueSST, need to invent.”
which is expected to fly in 2021, will
provide data that will allow engineers
to scale down those booms, so that they
sound more like muted thumps (see
“Lower the Boom,” Apr./May 2019). The
X-59 has an elongated fuselage, so that
the shock wave it generates is likewise
stretched, rising more slowly—therefore
exerting less pressure on the eardrum.
The aircraft was cleared for final
assembly in late 2019, and, in May, the
program reported its latest milestone
when GE Aviation announced that
the first engine for the X-59 had been
NASA (2)
shipped. While Chuck Yeager’s X-1

used a four-chamber rocket engine to

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Galactic Simulation
At the center of the Milky Way, superheated gas spirals into
a four-million-solar-mass black hole known as Sagittarius A*.
And now, thanks to NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, it’s
possible to see this spectacle firsthand through virtual reality.
By combining data from Chandra and other telescopes with Departures
supercomputer simulations, this new visualization allows users to
witness 500 years of cosmic evolution, spanning an area of space Robert Taylor
measuring about 18 trillion miles. Researchers modeled 25 very Antique Airplane
bright objects known as Wolf-Rayet stars (represented by white Association founder
dots, below), which blow off their outer layers into space to create Robert L. Taylor died
supersonic winds (colored blue and cyan) that are then captured June 20. He was 95. He
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in 1953, believing that
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and restorers who loved
Journey to the center Golden-Age airplanes
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and Viveport VR stores. became the site of a
nationally known annual
vintage-aircraft fly-in, and
in 1965 he built a museum
near the grass airstrip.
No one did more to keep
antique airplanes flying or
to pass their history on to
the next generation.
Bob Taylor at a 2008

fly-in. An Army Air Forces
crew chief in World War II,
he was a resource for
TOP LEFT: NASA; TOP RIGHT: CAROLINE SHEEN; BOTTOM: CREATIONS BY NICHOLAS
devotees of early aviation.
CREATIONS
BY NICHOLAS Young CEO
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company “Creations by Nicholas” was launched. can buy the model
The airplanes, made from parts like Popsicle airplanes or the
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experience of what it feels like to be an aerospace sale goes to a
engineer. Any child whose family has been directly foundation to help
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THE COUNT The number of pieces
in an online jigsaw puzzle created
by the Air Force, called “Million
Piece Mission.” 1,200,000
ASTRONOMERS
GET LUCKY
Researchers using the Gemini North
telescope’s Near Infrared Imager in
Hawaii have collected some of the
highest resolution images of Jupiter
ever obtained from the ground.
The images were created through a
technique called “lucky imaging,”
whereby a large number of very
short exposure images are obtained
and then only the sharpest images—
when the Earth’s atmosphere
Aircraft Hazards is briefly stable—are used. The
Plague of Locusts
images, when combined with
observations by the Hubble Space
Telescope and the Juno spacecraft,
reveal that lightning strikes, and
Locusts, the scourge of Locusts waged a smear some of the largest storm systems
farmers for millennia, also campaign against this that create them, are formed in and
Ethiopian airliner, forcing around large convective cells over
pose a threat to aviation deep clouds of water ice and liquid.
it to make an emergency
worldwide. They fly as landing in Addis Ababa in
high as 3,000 feet and in January.
swarms of up to 50 million, Reminiscent of a jack-o’-lantern,
deep layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere
according to the Australian
glow through gaps in the planet’s
Civil Aviation Safety the crisis. “Use of wipers at cloud cover in an infrared image.
Authority. times may cause the smear
Like drones, birds, and to spread even more; pilots
other creatures sharing the should consider this aspect
sky with airliners, locusts prior to opting to use wipers
TOP: ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES; BOTTOM: INTERNATIONAL GEMINI OBSERVATORY

typically pose the greatest to remove locusts from
danger to aircraft that are the windshield,” advises
landing or taking off. Last the Directorate General of
January, an Ethiopian Civil Aviation. Another risk
Airlines 737-700 was forced is blockage of pitot tubes,
to make an emergency which can cause “unreliable
landing after it flew into air speed” readings.
a swarm: Locusts got The agency also warns
trapped in the engines and ground crews that swarms
splattered across the cockpit can potentially damage
window, reducing visibility. equipment aboard parked
Now India, which is aircraft and recommends
seeing its worst recorded that all air inlets should be
locust activity in 20 years, covered. And the best time
has issued guidelines to to fly? Locusts don’t swarm
pilots on how to cope with at night.

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A New Angle on
the Dinosaurs
The dinosaurs were not
just unlucky—they were
spectacularly unlucky. New
3D simulations developed by a
research team led by Imperial
College London reveal that the
asteroid that triggered mass
extinctions 66 million years ago COVID-19
struck the Earth at an angle
of about 60 degrees, the very
angle that would thrust the
maximum amount of climate-
Disinfecting Drones
changing gases into the upper Eventually, sports arenas will once again fill up with
atmosphere. Scientists believe eager fans, and one of the many challenges in the era of the
the blast vaporized sulfate-rich coronavirus will be regularly sanitizing such large facilities.
marine rocks, spewing sulfur
that blocked the sun and wiped
A Syracuse-based startup called EagleHawk believes it has a
out 75 percent of the Earth’s solution: deploying drones to spray liquid disinfectant. The
species. The researchers, who drones—which previously had been equipped with thermal
developed the 3D model using cameras to inspect commercial roofs and heating systems—
numerical impact simulations are fitted with sprayers connected by a hose to a tank on
and geophysical data from the
site of the impact, say it can also the ground. EagleHawk demonstrated the technology at
be used to help us understand Sahlen Field (above), home of the Buffalo Bisons baseball
how large craters form on other team, and hopes to provide the service to every team in the
worlds. region.
AIM EVEN HIGHER

The newly created U.S. Space Force has a mission, a
logo, and now recruitment videos.
“I see exploration and courage,” says a young

woman. “And I see giant leaps making a come-
back.” The inspiring words serve as narration for
the latest U.S. Space Force recruiting video, titled
“Make History,” released on May 28 to encourage
TOP: EAGLEHAWK; BOTTOM: USAF
people to join the newly formed military service

while also framing the service’s purpose and
mission for the broader public. The sixth military
service is looking to fill jobs as diverse as “cable
and antenna systems specialists” and “space
operation officers.” So far, more than 8,500 Air
Force service members have volunteered to join—
The 30-second Space Force ad, dubbed “Make History,” opens with a including many who were inspired to apply on May
star-filled evening sky followed quickly by scenes of space-related activities. 4, known across the country as Star Wars Day.

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AT T H E M U S E U M
The Power
Beneath the Saturn V
AS THE SATURN V F-1 ENGINE MOVES INTO A NEW GALLERY, VISITORS
GAIN A WHOLE NEW PERSPECTIVE.
by Rebecca Maksel
IT BURNED FOR A TOTAL OF JUST passed, and audiences have changed. “We have to
192.6 SECONDS during four static tests in 1963, Moving the create an exhibit that explains why we went to the
each time producing 1.5 million pounds of thrust. Rocketdyne F-1 moon, and what came out of that exploration,” says
engine into the
And although this particular Rocketdyne F-1 new Destination
Neufeld, “and design it for a population that didn’t
engine never left Earth, it helped make possible Moon gallery took experience it personally.” The new Destination
the Saturn V launch that would carry astronauts an entire day. Moon gallery, slated to open in 2022, will place
to the moon. Suspending it from the lunar missions within their broader historical,
The engine, donated by Rocketdyne to the the ceiling took cultural, and political context.
another 10 hours.
Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum The hardest part?
The F-1 engine, the first artifact to move into
in 1970, was one of the original artifacts in the A sharp left-hand the new space, can now be seen in an entirely
Apollo to the Moon gallery when the Museum turn out of the old new light. In the old gallery, the F-1 was displayed
opened in 1976. “The gallery was built right after gallery, and another horizontally, surrounded by mirrors to create the
JIM PRESTON/NASM
into the new exhibit

the Apollo program,” says curator Michael Neufeld, illusion of the five engines clustered at the base
space.
“and it was designed with the assumption that the of every Saturn V.
public understood the program, that they’d just Now the 18-foot-long, 18,340-pound behemoth
experienced it.” But now almost 50 years have is suspended from the gallery ceiling, in order to

give visitors the illusion that they’re looking up The Destination
at the rocket from the launch pad. Moon gallery will
place the lunar
The pre-move planning lasted weeks, says missions in the
Zachary Guttendorf, a supervisory museum spe- context of the
cialist. A the end of those plans, an entire day was politics—and
devoted to moving the engine—on a crawler and even the music—
multiple dollies—from the old gallery to the new. of the era, and
will also do justice
Perhaps the most nerve-wracking part was to the diversity
lifting the F-1 up to the ceiling, where it had to of the Apollo
be welded into place. “Even though we’ve done workforce.
all the math, and we all know it’s going to work,”
says Guttendorf, “this object has been sitting
unmoving for decades. And when they pick it up,
and it’s being held entirely by two gantries, you
just hope nothing goes weird.”
THE 18-FOOT-LONG, 18,340-POUND we were trying to fix the problem of combustion

instability” (pressure swings in the engine caused,
BEHEMOTH IS SUSPENDED FROM THE in part, by the vibrations produced when the
GALLERY CEILING IN ORDER TO GIVE rocket’s liquid oxygen and rocket fuel combined).
VISITORS THE ILLUSION OF LOOKING UP Through years of analysis and testing, engineers
AT THE ROCKET FROM THE LAUNCH PAD. eliminated the problem, producing an engine
reliable enough to be trusted with the lives of
astronauts. “The F-1 never failed in flight once,”
The gallery will first explain ancient ideas about says Neufeld.
the moon, says Neufeld, then outline the begin- “It’s really exciting that Destination Moon has
nings of the space race, telling the story of lunar come about,” says Neufeld. “It will be a step for-
exploration all the way up to the contemporary era. ward in how we tell the whole Apollo story.” And
The F-1 is a large part of that story. “This F-1 was a big part of that story is the 65 F-1 engines that
a test article,” says Neufeld, “built at a time when propelled 13 Saturn V rockets off the launch pad.
2020 Katharine Wright

g Trophy
p y Recipient
p
AIRPLANE GUARDIAN ANGEL
National Air and Space Museum curator
Dorothy Cochrane has received the National
Aeronautic Association’s prestigious Katharine
Wright Trophy. The trophy is awarded
annually to individuals who make “a personal
contribution to the advancement of the art,
sport, and science of aviation and space flight
over an extended period of time.” Cochrane
TOP: NASM; BOTTOM: MARK AVINO/NASM
was recognized for her more than 40 years as a

curator at the National Air and Space Museum,
collecting and preserving aviation artifacts
that inspire and educate the public about the
importance of flight.
Cochrane has acquired more than a dozen
aerobatic, business, and general aviation
aircraft for the Museum, and was responsible
In addition to a plethora of other projects, Dorothy Cochrane, shown here at for the restoration of Betty Skelton’s Pitts
the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, is creating two new galleries focusing on Special, Little Stinker. Cochrane, the NAA
general aviation and aviation pioneers at the Museum on the National Mall. notes, “embodies what this award is all about.”

PROSPECTORS
MINING ICE MAY
CHANGE THE
THE
ECONOMY OF
SPACE TRAVEL.
MOON’S
GOLD BY MARK STRAUSS
There’s ice in them thar

craters. The south pole
of the moon is home to
permanently shadowed
regions where ice has
been accumulating
for billions of years.
Extracting water will
be crucial to exploring
the solar system and
could save companies
and spacefaring nations
NASA
billions of dollars.
August 2020 AIR &

AIR & SPACE
SPACE 21
T H E M O O N I S BA R R E N , but it’s not dry. In path to the final frontier is paved with ice harvested
2018, NASA announced scientists had found from the moon. The consensus is that an ice house
evidence of surface ice in the shadows of craters on the moon feeding a space-based fuel depot can
in the polar regions. be set up without exotic, sci-fi equipment—much
Those dark, frozen places beckon future explor- of the technology can be adapted from terrestrial
ers. Ice can be melted into water; water can produce analogs or is already in industrial use.
hydrogen and oxygen; hydrogen and oxygen can To be sure, the moon isn’t a hospitable place for
be made into fuel for spacecraft venturing to the mining. A lot of its ice is in dark, cold places. And
moon, Mars, and beyond. the initial tasks of confirming the precise loca-
“I’m fond of saying that water is the oil of space, tions of the water and then launching the mining
just like oil and petroleum products on Earth,” equipment up and out of Earth’s gravity well are
says George Sowers, a professor of mechanical daunting. But the payoff, in the form of a self-sus-
engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, taining space economy, would be tremendous.
who has 30 years of experience in the field of space One reason that Sowers is optimistic about the
An animation of transportation. “You have diesel, you have various prospects for lunar mining is that he has crunched
Shackleton crater, grades of gasoline, you can use it for creating plas- the numbers. “If you had a lunar propellant avail-
measuring 2.5 miles
deep, uses color to
tics and all this other kind of stuff. In space, water able, at the prices I think that it can be offered
depict elevation can be used for all different kinds of propulsion for, then the cost to go from Earth to the lunar
measurements demands, from low thrust to high thrust. It makes surface would be reduced by a factor of three,” he
made by the Lunar great radiation shielding. It’s essential for life. You says. And that’s just by refueling en route. The
Reconnaissance name it. I think the economy in space is going to cost to go from Earth to the Lunar Gateway—a
Orbiter, which also
found possible
run off of water.” proposed small spacecraft that would orbit the
evidence of ice Sowers isn’t alone. A growing chorus of research- moon and serve as living quarters and a trans-
NASA
deposits in 2012. ers, engineers, and entrepreneurs say the surest portation hub—would be “reduced by a factor of

The TRIDENT lunar
drill, developed by
Honeybee Robotics,
undergoes testing
at NASA’s Glenn
Research Center.
Engineers have
spent decades
developing a drill
that can handle the
dense, frozen lunar
regolith.
The DESTIN drill, two.” Sowers saves the best for last. “The cost to
developed by a come back from the moon,” he says, “would be
Canadian company,
was slated for
reduced by a factor of 70.”
NASA’s Resource If a company were to set up a lunar mining
Prospector mission, operation, after 10 years of operation, Sowers
which was cancelled estimates, it would see returns of between 10
in 2019 and percent and 30 percent, depending on whether
replaced with the
VIPER mission.
government agencies kick in some of the funding.
“I’d love to see commercial [players] kind of take
the lead, with support from NASA as a customer,”
says Sowers. “But the very first thing that has to
happen is that we have to prove that there’s really
ice there in the quantities that we think it is, that with regolith and sand.
we need it to be.” The most likely places to go At least, that’s the theory. What little we know
ice prospecting are the permanently shadowed for certain about the location of lunar ice is based
regions at the north and south poles that never on just two surveys. In 2009, NASA’s Lunar Crater
receive direct sunlight. Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
Because the moon tilts very little on its spin launched an impactor that slammed into the
axis (1.54 degrees, compared to the Earth’s 23.5 permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater
degrees), its polar regions are bathed in near-con- near the moon’s south pole, kicking up a plume
tinuous sunlight, except for deep depressions, of debris that contained some 26 gallons of frozen
such as the bottoms of craters. Between two and water. NASA says the mission’s data “revealed that
three billion years ago, ice began accumulating there is perhaps as much as hundreds of millions
in those cold dark pits. Some of it arrived from of tons of frozen water on the moon, enough to
water-rich asteroids and comets crashing into the make it an effective oasis for future explorers.”
lunar surface. Another likely source was volcanic Then, in 2018, a team of researchers examined
TOP: HONEYBEE ROBOTICS; CENTER: NASA
vents—during the earliest years of the moon’s for- data gathered by a NASA instrument that flew
mation—that spewed gases, including water vapor. aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and
And some of it is created when hydrogen particles found evidence—based, in part, on the distinct
in the solar wind react with oxygen bound in lunar reflective properties of water and ice—of frozen
rocks, forming molecules of hydroxide and water. patches of water scattered across the surface of
Over the millennia, meteors and comets contin- both polar regions.
ued to bombard the moon, smashing the ice and Ice hunters will need follow-up missions to
churning up the soil, so that ice near the lunar confirm how much water ice is on the moon and
surface now exists in the form of tiny grains mixed where it’s located. Unfortunately, satellite data

won’t do the trick, says Kevin Cannon, a postdoc- ments; transportation and landing craft are to be
toral scholar at the University of Central Florida supplied by one of the companies selected for the
who has written a paper for non-academics titled new Commercial Lunar Payload Services program,
“Ice Prospecting: Your Guide to Getting Rich on begun in 2018 to encourage private investment in
the Moon.” Instruments aboard a satellite that moon exploration. VIPER is scheduled to land at
rely on ultraviolet, visible, or near-infrared light the lunar south pole in late 2023. The golf-cart-
to identify ice deposits can sense to only microns size rover will survey and map ice deposits in the
or millimeters. “You really don’t know if it’s just a area, hopefully providing researchers with a larger
very thin frost or if it extends deeper,” says Cannon. pattern of ice distribution.
On the other hand, he adds, orbiting instruments One of VIPER’s instruments, originally devel-
that could potentially detect ice deposits beneath oped for the Resource Prospector, is a one-me-
the lunar surface—such as radar and neutron spec- ter drill called TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice
troscopy—have much lower spatial resolutions, Drill for Exploring New Terrain). Building a
“so you can’t really constrain where exactly on drill capable of penetrating beneath the moon’s
the surface the ice is.” surface while operating in subzero temperatures
has not been an easy task. Lunar regolith is dense
and unforgiving. “Over the few billion years it
became extremely compacted through meteorite
impacts, which create shock waves,” explains Kris
Zacny, the vice president of exploration technol-
ogies and principal investigator of VIPER’s drill
at Honeybee Robotics. And, if you add ice, it can
be harder than concrete.
“The biggest problem Apollo encountered
during drilling was not actually drilling but pulling
the drill out of the hole,” Zacny says. “Regolith is
so compacted that it jammed the auger flutes.” In
fact, during the Apollo 15 mission, Commander
David Scott sprained his shoulder while prying
out the Apollo Lunar Surface Drill to obtain a
core sample.
“Machinists—when drilling a hole in metal—
have the same problem; that’s why they developed
so-called pecking,” says Zacny. “Peck drilling
involves plunging the drill bit into metal some
short distance and then retracting it to the surface
to remove chips.”
TRIDENT will do the same, drilling down 10
centimeters then retracting to bring back “bites”
of regolith to the surface for study before drilling
into the next 10 centimeters. Engineers say this
An engineering If scientists and entrepreneurs want to get approach has multiple advantages. For starters,
model of the VIPER serious about water prospecting, they’re going since each sample comes from a known depth
climbs in a soil bin to need boots on the ground…or, more pre- interval, the subsurface stratigraphy can be more
that mimics the
moon’s terrain. Test
cisely, wheels on the ground. After the LCROSS easily preserved and studied. Also, the drill has
data will be used to data revealed the presence of ice in 2009, NASA time to cool off between bites, helping to ensure
NASA/BRIDGET CASWELL, ALCYON TECHNICAL SERVICES
evaluate the traction began planning a mission to send a rover there— that the drill doesn’t get so hot that it melts ice
of the wheels. In with mining instruments. By 2014, the Resource samples before they can be extracted.
June, NASA selected Prospector mission had a budget for instruments On VIPER, the entire sampling system has been
Astrobotic of
Pittsburgh to build a
and launch, and NASA invited Japan and Canada significantly simplified. “We are no longer delivering
lander to deliver the to contribute the landing vehicle and the rover. samples to instruments (as is done on Curiosity, for
flight model, Over the next few years, support for the Resource example), but instead we are placing regolith on the
scheduled to arrive Prospector waned as the agency focused on Mars, surface,” says Zacny. “The drill has a spout through
at the lunar south
and Japan and Canada withdrew. With the Trump which the regolith gravity-flows onto the surface
pole in 2023, where
it will survey and administration’s push to return to the moon, in forming a cone. The side of the cone is viewed by
map ice deposits in 2019 Resource Prospector became a new mission, the MSolo Mass Spectrometer and NIRVSS Infrared
the area. VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Spectrometer. These two instruments provide
Rover). NASA is building the rover and instru- volatile and mineralogical data.”

George Sowers, a
professor of
mechanical
engineering at the
Colorado School of
Mines, has 30 years
of experience in the
field of space
exploration. He
calculates that using
lunar propellant
could reduce the
cost of going from
the Earth to the
moon by a factor of
three.
Since VIPER will spend a lot of time in per- carrying sensitive instruments, NASA describes
manently shadowed regions, it won’t be able to RASSOR as its “blue-collar” robot because it does
rely on solar energy and will have enough power the hard labor.
for only 100 days. Future options for prospecting RASSOR will excavate regolith with two count-
missions might instead use the same technology er-rotating bucket drums fitted with toothy digging
that generates electricity for NASA deep-space scoops, each capable of holding 60 kilograms of
probes that are too far from the sun to generate soil. The barrels help solve a conundrum for NASA
solar power—for instance, a rover fitted with a engineers. When you push a shovel into dirt on
rechargeable battery and a radioisotope thermo- Earth, you remain on the ground since your weight
electric generator, which provides electrical power acts as a counterforce. But that’s trickier to pull
off when excavating in lower gravity, especially
since NASA wants the robot to be small and light
IN 2009, NASA’S LUNAR CRATER enough to fly on a rocket from Earth. The rotating
OBSERVATION AND SENSING SATELLITE bucket drums solve that problem in a couple of
(LCROSS) LAUNCHED AN IMPACTOR THAT ways. First, instead of pushing into the ground,
the robot excavates a shallow trench as it moves
SLAMMED INTO CABEUS CRATER NEAR along the ground. Also, since the two bucket
THE MOON’S SOUTH POLE, KICKING UP drums are simultaneously rotating in opposite
A PLUME OF DEBRIS THAT CONTAINED directions, each cancels out the digging force of
SOME 26 GALLONS OF FROZEN WATER. the other. The technical term for all of this is a
“near-zero horizontal and minimal vertical net
reaction force,” and the technique keeps the robot
on the surface even in low gravity.
Each pass of the RASSOR would excavate the
top five centimeters of surface regolith. And while
it can help search for ice as deep as one meter by
passing over the same trench repeatedly, mining
by using heat from the natural radioactive decay operations wouldn’t necessarily have to burrow
of plutonium-238. very far down, at least at first.
Cannon, though, doesn’t think that drilling alone Instead, Sowers says, it would be best to begin
will provide the necessary information. Instead, he by harvesting the ice that is most accessible—on
advocates digging a trench. “The trouble with a drill the lunar surface. “That ice is the equivalent of gold
is that, if you drill a hole, how representative are nuggets in the streams of Colorado,” Sowers says.
those results in three dimensions?” he says. “With “The first people in the Gold Rush came out, and
a trench, you’re getting that three-dimensional they could pick nuggets up out of the streams. After
information that I think is really what’s missing a while, they’d run out of nuggets and they’d look
COURTESY GEORGE SOWERS
so far from our knowledge of the ice.” back upstream for where the nuggets came from,
And, yes, NASA has been developing a rover and then they’d start finding the veins. Likewise,
capable of that kind of work. The Regolith the surface ice is the first thing you do because it’s
Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot cheap and you can get product out that you can
(RASSOR) is being designed to dig and haul sell without breaking the bank on capital invest-
soil. While most rovers are mobile science labs ment.” Then later, he says, as the mining opera-

tion expands, you can dig for deeper ice deposits. definitely helps in making it affordable and closing
The simplest method—what Sowers calls the the business case,” says Sowers.
“brute force” approach—would be to dig up the If a mining operation were to also use conduc-
surface regolith and extract the water by heating tive rods placed in the lunar soil, the heat from
it in an oven. “None of that’s exotic technology. the sun could melt ice as deep as 1.5 meters. Any
You could do that in your backyard with a shovel effort to go down farther would require exca-
and a wheelbarrow,” he quips. vation equipment. But by that time, the miners
While that would be the simplest method, it would have built an outpost with all the necessary
would be costly since excavation equipment is infrastructure, including landing and launch pads,
on the bulky side. (While the RASSOR might a chemical-processing plant that turns the water
be good for prospecting, it can’t haul enough into propellant, and a power source. “Once you’ve
for full-scale mining.) “If we can get the ice out depleted the surface ice, you come in with a few
without digging up the dirt, our numbers show additional machines at pretty low marginal costs,
we can save around 50 percent on the mass,” says and you are still leveraging that investment you
Sowers. “That’s significant because mass is dollars, made in all that other infrastructure,” says Sowers.
especially in space.” Another possible approach to thermal mining is Trans Astronautica
Instead of digging, Sowers has proposed a pro- being developed by Joel Sercel, a 14-year veteran CEO Joel Sercel
cess called “thermal mining” and has a NASA grant of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CEO of and partners have
received funding
to develop it. Why dig up the ice when sunlight Trans Astronautica Corporation, which is dedi- from NASA to
is available? It’s much more cost effective to use cated to accelerating the process of human space continue developing
mirrors to redirect that sunlight onto the surface exploration. Sercel and his partners—including plans for a polar
of the permanently shadowed regions. By placing Honeybee Robotics and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin— mining outpost that
a dome over the area that is being heated, you can have received “phase two” funding from NASA’s would extract
hydrogen and
JOEL SERCEL
trap the vapor then collect it for further process- Innovative Advanced Concepts program to develop oxygen from water
ing. “If we can make that work, then you actually plans for a lunar mining outpost that would include for fuel and life
have a significant amount of cost savings, and that robotic rovers, called Beetles, which extract water support.
Harvesting water
in perpetual
darkness
Companies mining lunar
ice confront a dilemma: An
ideal place to extract ice
is at the bottom of deep
craters shrouded in perpetual
darkness. But that darkness
also deprives them of easy
access to sunlight for solar
power. Trans Astronautica
CEO Joel Sercel’s solution
is an array of towers—each
a kilometer tall—called
“Sun Flowers” to power
the outpost’s facilities.
Their feet—which are solar
arrays that sit on the dark
permafrost—are bathed
in sunlight reflected from
lightweight disk-shaped
heads high above in the sun.
Robotic mining rovers, called
“Beetles,” would run on water
fuel cells.

Initially, NASA plans waves would provide more focused heating while
to use a drill to infrared radiation would “heat the surface of the
locate ice deposits
on the moon, but
moon so that the water just doesn’t re-condense
digging a trench there” as the ice is melted, says Sercel.
might prove to be The mining rovers would be part of a larger,
more effective. A self-sustaining Lunar Polar Mining Outpost in an
digging robot named ice-rich region of the lunar north pole that Sercel
RASSOR (top,
undergoing tests at
has dubbed “New Mesopotamia,” since he sees it
NASA’s Kennedy as the moon’s equivalent of the Fertile Crescent
Space Center in on Earth. Power would be provided by towers a
Florida on June 5, kilometer tall, called “Sun Flowers,” with their feet
2019) will excavate of solar arrays on the dark permafrost and their
regolith with rotating
bucket drums fitted
lightweight reflector heads in the sun. Since the
with toothy digging nights there last only 100 hours per year, the tow-
scoops (bottom), ers would capture sunlight 97 percent of the year.
each capable of The Beetles would drop off the harvested water
holding 60
at the base, where some of it would be purified
kilograms.
and set aside as drinking water for the astronauts
managing the mining site, and some of it would be
broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to pro-
through a patent-pending process called radiant vide both air and propellant. The robotic rovers
gas dynamic (RGD) mining, which uses a com- would run on water fuel cells, so they would, in
bination of radio-frequency heaters, microwave, effect, be mining their own power sources. Fuel
and infrared radiation to heat permafrost and cells could also be used to power the base during
other types of ice deposits. the periodic blackouts throughout the year.
According to Sercel, a fleet of Beetles would Both Sercel and Sowers see the development of
each traverse to a likely spot and lower a dome fuel depots on the moon as an essential first step
NASA/KIM SHIFLETT (2)
measuring five meters in diameter over an area of to Mars or beyond. In fact, wherever we go in the
lunar regolith. Water ice would be extracted by solar system, experts agree that we will first need
means of radio-frequency heaters—similar to those to make space exploration sustainable. And that
used on Earth to vaporize and remove chemicals will begin with a deceptively simple-sounding
from contaminated soil. Bombardment by micro- task: Just add water.

THE RIGHT TO
FLY AND
By 2016, Jeannie Leavitt, then a brigadier general,

commanded the U.S. Air Force 57th Wing at Nellis
Air Force Base. At a base airshow that year, she
enjoyed one of the job’s perks: a flight with the Air
Force Thunderbirds.

FIGHT IN 1993, BEFORE THE AIR FORCE
PERMITTED WOMEN TO FLY
IN COMBAT, NEW PILOT JEANNIE
FLYNN REQUESTED THE F-15.
■ BY MORGAN SMITH
A 1 9 9 4 P H OTO G R A P H S H OWS a 27-year-old Jeannie Flynn in an

F-15E Strike Eagle, just as she officially became the first U.S. Air Force
female fighter pilot accepted for combat. She is sitting in the cockpit she
earned—then fought for.
To get to that cockpit, Flynn, who is now Jeannie Leavitt, had to
prove a lot of people wrong, including the military’s top leadership. But
the image she projects in the photo is more strength than swagger. She
is determined, but not defiant. That determination would serve Leavitt
well during the next two and a half decades, when she climbed to the
highest ranks of the U.S. Air Force.
“I realize not every person wanted this to happen,” she told reporters
in 1993. “But I realize that’s also irrelevant.”
By then, she had come to understand that the price of doing what she
loved—and was very good at—was the unyielding spotlight her accom-
plishments attracted. Even if she did not embrace the role of pioneer,
she would eventually learn to accept it.
Leavitt is now a two-star general based in San Antonio, Texas, where
until recently she commanded the Air Force recruiting services. During
my interviews with her in the spring, she spoke with the well-honed
cadences of someone who has spent her professional life in the public
eye. But she was also friendly and animated, especially when discussing
her favorite airplane, the F-15.
The attention started when Leavitt was going through pilot training
at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. When it became clear she would
graduate number one in her class, in 1993, entitling her to first choice of
the aircraft she would fly, everyone began to talk. What would happen,
USAF
if, as she wanted, she decided to pick a fighter?

“All hell broke loose,” says Martha McSally, a Instead, she was assigned to fly refueling tankers.
U.S. senator from Arizona who was then a flight A few months later, she received a call from Air
instructor in the Cessna T-37 at Laughlin. “People Force leadership. Under newly elected President Bill
[were] totally supportive of her generally (‘Oh, Clinton, Defense Secretary Les Aspin would soon
she’s so great, she’s top of the class’), but as soon as announce he would allow women to fly in combat.
she was going to buck the system—or think about Leavitt was about to become a feminist icon.
bucking the system—I remember a lot of pressure,
a lot of denigration, a lot of really trying to clamp
down on her to pressure her not to do that.” “ JEANNIE GRADUATED NUMBER ONE
Leavitt characterized the chatter around her as IN HER CLASS,” SAID M CPEAK. “SHE’S
“a lot of unsolicited advice.” BEEN IN A HOLDING PATTERN FOR SIX
All but a few of her instructors had warned her
MONTHS. SHE’S NOT LEAPFROGGING
that selecting a fighter jet would characterize her
as a troublemaker and jeopardize her Air Force ANYONE. SHE’S BEEN DELAYED.”
career. One by one, her commanding officers had
told her that while U.S. law had changed to allow
women to fly in combat, Department of Defense
policy had not.
Though Leavitt knew the policy would eventu-
ally have to change, she did not know when. About
six months before she got to Laughlin, Air Force AT A PENTAGON NEWS CONFERENCE on April During a five-month
Chief of Staff Merrill McPeak had made his own 28, 1993, two other women joined Leavitt on deployment to
position clear, telling a congressional committee stage. Both McSally and Sharon Preszler, a C-21 Bagram Air Base in
that he would choose a less-qualified male pilot cargo pilot, had sought to fly fighters when they Afghanistan, Leavitt
over a highly qualified female pilot to fly with him. had completed pilot training a few years earlier. flew the F-15E
Strike Eagle on
When Leavitt stood up to announce her choice The three women stood next to McPeak, who had air-to-ground
in the auditorium at Laughlin, she knew the answer earlier said that while he had opposed the change, missions in support
would be no. But she did it anyway. She said she there was “always a small chance” he was wrong. of U.S. soldiers.
wanted to fly the F-15E, which at the time was the The women fielded questions about whether
newest fighter variant in the Air Force inventory. they had the physical stamina to compete one on
one with men, whether women had the tempera-
ment to kill in combat, why they would even want
to fly a fighter jet, and how they would deal with
harassment and hostility from their fellow airmen.
One question was directed at Leavitt in particular.
A reporter asked if by going into fighter training so
soon, she was “leapfrogging” over qualified men.
When she tried to explain that she was following
the same process as everyone else, the reporter asked
McPeak to step in and clarify. “Jeannie graduated
number one in her class,” he said. “She’s been in a
holding pattern for six months. She’s not leapfrog-
ging anyone. She’s been delayed.”
It was an acknowledgment from the man who
had tried to stand in her way that the system that
had initially prevented her from becoming a fighter
pilot was unjust. The question of female fighter pilots
had been settled—as a matter of law and policy. It
was now time for the women to prove themselves.
Over the next two decades, the three women
would rack up a long list of firsts, with Leavitt Before Leavitt could
leading the way. That July, she began training become a fighter
in the F-15E at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. pilot, she had to
Leavitt graduated from fighter training in April master fighter-
1994 and went on to her first active-duty assign- fundamentals
training in an AT-38
ment at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North at New Mexico’s
Carolina. There she was given the call sign “Tally.” Holloman Air Force
USAF
She declined to share the story of how that hap- Base.

pened, saying only that it came from “Tally Ho,”
Air Force lingo for spotting an enemy aircraft. “It’s
usually for doing something silly,” she says. “I’ll just
leave it at that.”
McSally, an A-10 pilot, would be the first to deploy
in combat and the first to command an A-10 squad-
ron. Leavitt was the first to graduate from—and teach
at—the Air Force’s elite weapons school, and later
to command a combat fighter wing. Preszler went
on to fly F-16s: the first woman to train, deploy,
and teach in the single-seat, single-engine fighter.
But though they all became well-known in the
military community, each woman was left alone to
cope with the challenges ahead. They each started
training at different times, in different aircraft, and
at different bases.
Preszler and McSally both mentioned instances during the early days of training, where everybody On April 28, 1993,
when senior officers refused to shake their hands was watching us, and there were just some jerks General Merrill
McPeak announced
or turned their backs in response to a greeting. Says who were going to try to take away your dream.”
TOP: USAF; BOTTOM: DOD/ROBERT D. WARD
the selection of
Leavitt: “Some men were subtle with their lack of Their commanders were also paying close atten- Sharon Preszler,
support, while a couple were outwardly hostile tion to how well the three women were doing. Martha McSally,
toward me. The good news is that some of the men “The leadership was always watching you,” says and Leavitt (left to
who were initially opposed to having female pilots Preszler. “So wherever you were, they are sending right) as the Air
Force’s first female
in a fighter squadron eventually changed their minds reports to all the generals in the Air Force, talking combat pilots.
once they saw that we were competent pilots.” about how you are doing. You just had extra scru-
“It didn’t help that our leader at the top had indi- tiny—walking into places where you know there’s
cated lack of support,” says McSally. “Leadership people who don’t want you. That’s not the most
matters. Culture matters—it sets the stage. Especially healthy environment.”

On May 29, 2014,
Leavitt flew the lead
aircraft in a
formation of three
F-15Es—a “fini
flight” to celebrate
her last mission in
the F-15 as
commander of the
4th Fighter Wing at
Seymour Johnson
Air Force Base in
North Carolina.
Some of the difficulties were more practical. Leavitt is now a command pilot, an Air Force des-
Flightsuits and the survival gear essential to a ignation that means she has logged more than 3,000
fighter pilot’s airborne comfort and safety were hours. That time includes more than 300 hours in
all designed to fit men. Preszler said she flew for combat while stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. She
weeks not knowing that her G-suit sat too high on says her most memorable combat missions are the
USAF/SENIOR AIRMAN JOHN NIEVES CAMACHO

her torso, bruising her ribs every time she went in ones in which she flew the F-15 to support ground
the air. When she finally asked a fellow pilot how troops. These close-air support missions, which
he coped with the pain, he looked at her blankly. capitalized on the F-15E’s low-altitude capabilities
Leavitt did not learn that the Air Force had begun (a terrain-following radar and a digital moving map
making flightsuits designed for women until she of the ground below), helped protect U.S. soldiers
became commander of the recruiting services in who were taking fire or whose battlefield positions
2018. “My timing was such that I tried very hard just were about to be discovered by enemy scouts.
to blend in,” says Leavitt. “I didn’t identify the chal- The first time Leavitt flew in enemy territory,
lenges, I just dealt with them. Good on the women knowing that people on the ground wanted to shoot
who followed later who said, ‘Wait a minute, these her out of the sky, was “a little surreal.” But her Air
flightsuits don’t actually fit us.’ ”
BY THE TIME LEAVITT became the first woman to

enter the fighter track at the Weapons Instructor
Course—an Air Force flying school equivalent to
the U.S. Navy’s Top Gun and available to only the
most talented aviators—being a pioneer had become
familiar territory. Says Leavitt: “It was like any place
where I was the first. There were people who didn’t
want to see women there. There were people who
were waiting to see how I’d do.”
When she graduated in 1998, she had grown tired
of being separated out from her male colleagues
and put in front of cameras for news conferences
every time she broke a barrier. “It’s a hard program
for anyone,” says Leavitt. “It is an incredibly chal-
lenging program. That was why, at the end, I really
was opposed to any kind of attention focused on
me. Yes, I graduated, but everyone else who was
graduating with me worked just as hard, and I didn’t
think it was appropriate, given the nature of that
program, to highlight me.”
It was her turn to tell the Air Force no. (There
were no press releases or news conferences high-
lighting her graduation.)

Force training kicked in. “Your adrenaline gets going Women are still only a small fraction of Air Force
and your heart rate increases,” says Leavitt. “But you fighter pilots. Currently, there are only 85 in the
remember what you need to do because the training entire Air Force, making up three percent of the
is so realistic.” Asked if she worried about her own total, according to Air Force data. The number
safety, Leavitt says: “I didn’t typically think about my has only nudged upward in the last 20 years, from
life being in danger because I felt like the troops on one percent in 2000. The percentage of female air
the ground were so much more vulnerable.” personnel overall has also remained roughly level,
Though the F-15E is capable of flying at Mach climbing from just 19 to 20 percent since then.
2.4, the air-to-ground missions Leavitt flew didn’t In her role as recruiting services commander,
require such speed. Sometimes, however, she got to Leavitt made a priority of increasing diversity in the
fly fast while enforcing the no-fly-zone in southern Air Force by reaching out to women and minority
Iraq. “We would occasionally go supersonic when groups. “There is huge interest from the Air Force
we started air intercepts,” she says, “but the adversary to be a very diverse force,” says Leavitt. “We want a
aircraft always turned away well short of the border.” mix of backgrounds. We want a mix of races, gen-
Leavitt believes in the F-15. “I think in the case of ders. We don’t want to all look the same. We don’t
the F-15E, the crew concept with two people [pilot want to all think the same—we want the diversity of
and weapon systems officer] works very well,” she thought. We know that an adversary of the future
says. “We have so much information being fed into is going to have potentially similar capabilities to
the airplane with all the different sensors and the us so we are going to beat them with being able to
At Edwards Air
data link. It helps you be more effective in that air- out-think them.”
Force Base last year, plane when you have a crew that works together.” For Leavitt, who in June became the operations
generals Kristin Leavitt’s respect for the F-15 makes for sometimes and communications director for the Air Education
Goodwin, Dawn spirited debates with her husband, who is a retired and Training Command, the reach for diversity now
Dunlop, and Leavitt Air Force F-16 pilot. Says Leavitt: “When it comes includes embracing the attention that comes with
(foreground, left to
right) stand at the
to discussions over which airplane is better or sin- being a pioneer. “If I inspire any young woman,
head of a group of gle-seat versus two-seat, we just agree to disagree.” young man to work hard and dream big and accom-
female fighter, plish more than they thought possible, then that’s
bomber, and well worth me telling the story,” she says. It has
transport pilots and THOUGH THE AIR FORCE has made advancements now become easier for her to relinquish her privacy
navigators, their
presence a
in designing gear for female aviators, in some ways because she views all those years of breaking down
recruiting asset for the service has changed only marginally since Leavitt barriers as a story that belongs not only to her but
USAF
the Air Force. first sat in a fighter cockpit. to the entire Air Force.

★ ★ ★ WO R L D WA R I I VJ DAY 7 5
DY,
STORIES OF THE NO ONE MAKES AN ENTRANCE like the Americans. One of the first indica-
tions that they were closing in was the crash of a heavy wooden crate of Cashmere
AIRMEN IN JOHN Bouquet soap plunging through the roof of the Omori prison barracks, missing
SWOPE’S FAMOUS Army Air Forces Major Robert F. Goldsworthy by three feet. “I thought, what
a hell of a thing, to live through prison life only to get killed by a case of soap,”
WORLD WAR II he wrote in 2000, in a comment posted to a B-29 website.
Until a few weeks before, there had been little hope among the approximately
PHOTOGRAPH 600 prisoners at the Omori main camp. On the manmade prison island in Tokyo
OF THE OMORI Bay, rumors were nearly as thick as the lice and the rats. Most of the prisoners
speculated that when the Americans got too close, the guards would gather them
PRISON CAMP. together and gun them down. And by the summer of 1945, there was little doubt
that the Americans were now very, very close.
■ BY CORY GRAFF From their barracks, the prisoners had seen the night skies glow from fires
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
On August 29, 1945, photographer John Swope, aboard a U.S. Navy landing craft,
snapped a photo of men in a Japanese prison camp the Navy had come to liberate. The
POWs told him that the constant humiliation and fear of physical abuse was more
oppressive than the punishment itself. After describing the brutality of some guards,
prisoners made a point of introducing Swope to the guards who were kind to them.

9
6
7
1 2 3 5 0 11 12
ĜĞ
1) USAAF Sgt. William E. Price 2) USAAF Pvt. Milton L. McMullen 3) Dutch Marine Sailor 1st Class W.H. Jansen 4)
USAAF 1st Lt. Gordon H. Scott 5) USN Motor Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Clayton O. Decker 6) USAAF Pvt. Robert
E. Altman 7) USN Torpedoman’s Mate 3rd Class Norman A. Albertsen 8) USN Electrician’s Mate 2nd Class James
“Denny” Landrum. The flag he’s holding (9) was made from bed sheets and colored pencils; it is currently on loan
to the Virginia War Memorial. 10) USN Lt. Daniel T. Galvin 11) USAAF 2nd Lt. Thomas C. Cartwright 12) USMC Pvt.
1st Class Arthur J. Calanchini 13) South African 2nd Lt. Lambert Rees.
in Yokohama and Tokyo as they burned from were sent to established labor camps, like Omori.
massive B-29 bomber raids. Later they caught As a result, an Omori roll call sounded like a
glimpses of smaller airplanes, launched from U.S. Who’s Who of the war in the Pacific. At one time
aircraft carriers, shuttling through angry puffs of or another, the camp was home to Marine Corps
anti-aircraft fire to pummel nearby airfields, port ace Gregory “Pappy” Boyington, former Olympic
facilities, and storehouses. Their comrades were runner and Army bombardier Louis Zamperini
tantalizingly near. (the subject of Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 book
Some of the prisoners interned at Omori were Unbroken), and Richard “Killer” O’Kane, the most
already “dead”—at least, no one outside the prison successful submarine commander of the war.
walls knew they were alive. The Japanese classi- The treatment at the camp was horrific. The
fied the captured sailors and airmen as “unarmed Japanese demanded labor in exchange for mea-
belligerents,” and they were held without rights or ger rations, so the able-bodied men were sent to
privileges. The Red Cross, the U.S. government, work at nearby docks and warehouses. They did
and the men’s own families had no information what they could to sabotage the work instead of
about them. supplying meaningful labor. Beatings, sickness,
Omori’s population included prisoners who the and barely edible food led to the death of many
Japanese viewed as the most troublesome, valuable, of Omori’s prisoners.
or notable, many of whom had been transferred But things changed suddenly on August 15, 1945.
from a nearby secret high-intensity interrogation After the Japanese emperor’s speech announcing
camp run by the Japanese navy. After the enemy surrender, the forced work details suddenly ceased.
had wrung as much information as they could from Many of the guards abandoned their posts, and
their captives through torture and abuse, the men those who were left passed out clothes, vitamins,

toilet paper, and more food than the startled A Corsair pilot dropped half a pack of cigarettes
captives had ever seen before. “It seems as if the with a note wrapped around it, which read, “Hang
Japanese were trying in a few days of kindness to on! It won’t be long now!”
make up for the years of deprivation and cruelty,” Another message was added to the top of the
Ernest Norquist, a Bataan Death March survivor, barracks after a B-29 Superfortress lumbered
wrote in his postwar memoir, Our Paradise: A GI’s over, dropping loads of medicine, food, clothes,
War Diary. toothbrushes, razors, gum, and the big box of
Now the American carrier aircraft roared over- soap that nearly killed Bob Goldsworthy when
head unimpeded, so close the prisoners could see its parachute-rigged bundle broke apart in midair.
the pilots’ faces. The prisoners took to writing The new directive on the roof stated: “Drop-Out-
Side Thank-You.”
By the time American ships advanced into
THE FIRST BOAT THAT CAME Tokyo Bay on August 29, the prisoners were
CLOSE TO THE ENEMY’S SHORELINE delirious with excitement. Their death sentence,
WAS FILLED WITH TOP BRASS, it seemed, had been lifted. That afternoon, a group
DOCTORS, AND NERVOUS SAILORS of landing craft began churning toward the shore
with an Avenger torpedo bomber from the USS
WITH VERY ITCHY TRIGGER FINGERS.
Cowpens guiding them straight toward the camp.
THE CRAFT ALSO CARRIED A NAVY The first boat that came close to the enemy’s
PHOTOGRAPHER NAMED JOHN SWOPE. shoreline was filled with top brass, doctors, and
nervous sailors with very itchy trigger fingers. The
craft also carried a Navy photographer named John
Swope. The scene in front of him was pandemo-
nium. “We finally spotted the moving figures on
a pier jutting out to the bay,” he wrote his wife.
“We came closer—they were screaming and yell-
messages on the barracks roofs using Japanese ing and waving their arms, their shirts, and an
tooth powder mixed with water, including large American flag. Some wore no clothing at all, some
“P.W.”s (prisoner of war), “Pappy Boyington Here!” had G-strings, and others had on the remnants
and “Candy, Food, Home, Thanx.” Other men of what they were captured in, and a few had on
made flags from bedsheets and colored pencils. new clothes that had been dropped on them by
Carrier-based
aircraft were
directed to attack
Japanese targets
on Chichi Jima.
This Avenger
collided with
another but was
able to limp back
to the fleet. Other
aircrews weren’t
so lucky.
Helldiver pilot
Lieutenant Daniel
Galvin and his
gunner were shot
down during their
run; they spent
the rest of the war
as POWs.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES

B-29s the last few days. Some started to swim for away, nursing him back to health. Three months
our boat and were told to go back; the others kept later, the Japanese caught up with him.
waving and shouting and we waved and shouted
back and tears came to my eyes.” On December 10, 1941, Captain Colin Kelly’s
Swope was able to get only a few shots before B-17C flew over the Philippines, looking for
the boat came ashore and he was mobbed. “[We] enemy ships. After bombing a light cruiser and
were immediately besieged by a hundred clasping a destroyer, the B-17 crew was attacked by Zero
hands and arms. They continued to cheer and yell fighters. Kelly ordered his men to bail out of their
and shake our hands and clap us on the back and damaged aircraft. Private Robert E. Altman (6),
fall on us in tear-soaked embraces. They asked
us a million questions. They told us millions of
things about themselves, and all the talk jumbled “SOME STARTED TO SWIM FOR OUR
into a great din of welcome, with no one hearing BOAT AND WERE TOLD TO GO BACK; THE
anyone.” Swope’s 144-page letter of the experience, OTHERS KEPT WAVING AND SHOUTING
written to his wife, actress Dorothy McGuire, was
later republished in a book by Carolyn Peter titled, AND WE WAVED AND SHOUTED BACK AND
A Letter From Japan: The Photographs of John Swope. TEARS CAME TO MY EYES.”
Over the years, historians and biographers have —JOHN SWOPE
searched the famous photo for individuals, but the
identities of all have never been revealed in a single
report. Their stories of survival and capture are a
fascinating narrative of the Pacific war, ranging
from its first day to the very last.
Private Milton L. McMullen (2) was assigned to
the B-17s of the 19th Bomb Group at Clark Field in the radioman and “tub gunner” on Kelly’s burning
the Philippines. When the Japanese attacked, on the airplane, was one of the men who jumped.
same day as Pearl Harbor, McMullen was injured When the bomber exploded, Kelly became one
by shrapnel from exploding bombs. He avoided the of America’s first heroes of the war. Altman, who
Bataan Death March when the locals secreted him had been wounded in the attack, was captured in
NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Above, left: Pilots of the subsequent seizure of the Philippines. At the when the engine on his North American P-51D,
the 78th Fighter time of Swope’s photo, he had been a prisoner for named Sparkin’ Eyes, suddenly spewed gallons of
Squadron in Hawaii, more than 40 months. oil onto his windscreen and then quit cold. He
March 1945.
Gordon Scott is in
Many miles away and a few years later, American had just enough time to jettison the canopy and
the front row, right. carrier aircraft were working over Japanese-held put both hands on the gunsight to protect his
Above, right: In outposts in the Pacific. The target for the USS face before the Mustang’s air scoop dug into the
2006, Zero pilot Hornet ’s aircraft that day was Chichi Jima, which waters of Lake Kasumigaura at 90 miles an hour.
Takeshi Maeda and was dreaded by the aviators. The harbor was sur- Civilians pulled Scott from the water and beat
Scott met in
Honolulu to share
rounded by hills studded with anti-aircraft guns; him badly, cut him with rice knives, and seemed
memories of the air the pilots called the harbor “the punch bowl,” and determined to kill him. Japanese soldiers pulled
war in the Pacific. there was only one path in and out. In his book him from the enraged mob, and shoved Scott into
Dauntless Helldivers, Harold Buell relates his feelings a cage filled with other American airmen, some
about the island. “Chichi Jima was a tough, dirty of whom appeared to have been there for years.
target that always scared the hell out of me and Even so, he thought, “My God, I have it made.”
left me feeling like I hadn’t accomplished anything On July 28, 1945, while attacking a battleship
except to stay alive when I got safely outside the in Kure Harbor, a Consolidated B-24J named
bowl again.” Lonesome Lady was badly hit. Pilot Lieutenant
On June 15, 1944, Lieutenant Daniel Galvin Thomas Cartwright (11) struggled to control the
(10) flew his Curtiss SB2C-1C Helldiver into the aircraft, but it was hopeless. Seven of the 10-man
bowl on a bombing run, but no one saw him come crew were captured soon after bailout and trans-
out. The Hornet ’s aircraft action report states, “Lt. ported to a nearby city.
Galvin was apparently hit by [anti-aircraft fire] By early August, Cartwright was singled out
LEFT: COURTESY JERRY YELLIN VIA MARK STEVENS; RIGHT: MITCH MOORE
as he was last seen in his dive.” Galvin and his and moved to an interrogation center near Tokyo.
gunner, Airman Oscar Long, spent the next 14 He later wrote, “I felt a bit sorry for myself.” On
months as prisoners of the Japanese. August 6, when the atomic bomb leveled the city
On April 7, 1945, a Boeing B-29 named City of of Hiroshima, Cartright’s six crewmates and six
Muncie was rammed head-on by a Japanese fighter more U.S. airmen captured in the raid were still
over Nagoya. The airplane’s left wing ripped away as there. The military police headquarters building
Rooftop signs at the it rolled over on its back and spun down in flames. in which the prisoners were housed was just
Omori POW camp Three of the 10-man crew were captured, among 400 yards from ground zero; all died from the
alerted B-29 airmen
to the number of
them Sergeant William Price (1). He related years resulting blast.
POWs at the site— later, “[We] were captured as soon as we hit the One of the photographs Swope shot of the Omori
including the ground.” His two surviving companions, Lieutenant prisoners on the shoreline appeared in hundreds
famous, such as Melvin L. “Smoke” Greene and Sergeant Leroy of American newspapers in 1945 and became the
Pappy Boyington— Siegel, were also interned at Omori. cover of U.S. Camera’s Victory Volume in 1946.
and spelled out the
prisoners’ gratitude
Lieutenant Gordon Scott (4) was putting on The image of the prisoners waving three flags in a
for the food his own fireworks show on July 4, 1945. He was near-riot of jubilation shows more than 30 men—a
dropped to them. blasting Japanese floatplanes northeast of Tokyo mere fraction of those interned at Omori.

THERE’S A FAMOUS RUSSIAN SAYING: Something than the Kinzhal. And the Kinzhal isn’t small: It
new is something old that everyone has forgotten. weighs half a metric ton and can fly 1,200 miles.
Consider the MiG-31 fighter, a seemingly obsolete Observers speculated that this newer, larger mis-
40-year-old warhorse that may be on the verge of sile was meant to be shot upward at U.S. and allied
a dangerous second act, or even a third. low-Earth-orbit satellites. An April 2020 article by
The -31, whose forte back in the 1980s was British scholar Bart Hendrickx posted in The Space
chasing U.S. SR-71 spyplanes at enormous speed Review flushes out this hypothesis following clues
12 miles above the Soviet Arctic, has officially been from Russian defense contracts and terse official
repurposed as a delivery vehicle for the Kinzhal statements. His conclusion: The MiG-31 is knee-
(“dagger”), one of the family of hypersonic missiles deep in a secret Kremlin anti-satellite plan dubbed
Vladimir Putin is counting on to get Russia back Burevestnik, the storm-riding bird memorialized
into the global arms race. in a 1901 epic poem by Maxim Gorky.
But that’s the less intriguing job. What’s really Why the MiG-31? To start with, it’s big. You
roiled defense aviation geeks for the past two years might say huge. It took off for its first mission in
is a photo, posted by unofficial snoops, of a MiG-31 1981 weighing 42,000 kilos (92,400 pounds), one-
carrying a mystery missile that looks even bigger and-a-half times the mass of the Sukhoi Su-27, its

SECRET
MISSION FOR
AN OLD MiG
CAN THE MEANEST MiG OF
THE COLD WAR REMAIN
LETHAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY?
■ BY CRAIG MELLOW
A MiG-31K interceptor is
testing the Kh-47M2
Kinzhal missile, which has
a claimed range of 1,200
miles and a Mach 10
speed. And it may no
KREMLIN.RU
longer be the scariest

missile the 40-year-old
fighter can carry.

A MiG-31 pilot
practices landing on
a damaged airstrip
at Yelizovo airfield,
Kamchatka, Krai.
Soviet contemporary, and toting four R-33 missiles, languished while other Russian weapons systems
which were just 10 kilos lighter than the Kinzhal. switched to earning their keep through export.
The -31 is also one of the fastest airplanes flying Four decades on, the MiG-31 has never fired a
today. It cruises as fast as Mach 2.4 (1,840 miles per shot in anger—or earned the Kremlin a ruble from
hour), and can rev above Mach 2.8 in hot pursuit. any foreign sale.
It ranged 1,250 kilometers (776 miles) even before Present-day conflicts may be another story as
mid-air refueling was added in the mid-1980s. “blinding” the enemy’s eyes in the sky becomes a
The MiG-31 attains this velocity by flying at critical factor in battlefield dominance. Shooting at
extreme altitude—66,000 feet—to minimize air satellites from fighter aircraft is not exactly a new
resistance. Closer to the ground, it can still make idea either. The U.S. Air Force did it successfully
Mach 1.2. Its R-33s can (in theory) hit targets 300 at least once back in 1980s Star Wars days, clock-
kilometers away. The blend of speed and lethal ing a dummy target with an ASM-135A missile
firepower earned the “Foxhound” respect from launched by an F-15 (“The First Space Ace,” April/
its NATO opponents back in the day. A squad of May 2018). The Soviets’ planned response involved
four -31s was enough to keep pests away from mounting a modified MiG-31 with a 79M6 missile.
900 kilometers of border. It got through a few test flights before perestroika
Again, in theory. No one ever tested them. put all such efforts on a long pause. The Kinzhal,
if Russian propaganda is to be believed, boasts a
range of 1,200 miles, which just happens to be the
maximum altitude of a low-Earth-orbit satellite. So
The MiG-31’s cardinal flaw was lack of versatility. it doesn’t stretch credibility (too much) to believe
It deterred against airborne attack on the Soviet that the enormous Missile X at Zhukovskoe was
MINISTRY OF DEFENSE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
homeland, a far-fetched scenario even in the you- a cousin of the Kinzhal modified for space attack.
blink-first ’80s, and arguably kept the Blackbird If one is aiming for orbiting targets at that pro-
scrupulously out of Soviet airspace. But with the digious distance, starting with a mobile platform
advent of multi-purpose fighters, like the Su-27 and 66,000 feet up offers considerable advantages. You
U.S. contemporaries F-14 and F-15, the MiG-31 save boatloads of energy—and cost—launching
was decisively mono-functional. “It’s more like a from that altitude. No less important, the MiG-31 Part of the aviation
surface-to-air missile than a plane,” says Michael could shift satellite killing to a 24/7 regime, says regiment of Russia’s
Kofman, director of the Russia Studies Program Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Security Northern Fleet at
Monchegorsk, a
at Washington defense think-tank CNA. Project at the Center for Strategic and International Foxhound waits for
Too big and clumsy for use in dogfights or Studies in Washington, D.C. “Ground-based sys- its pilot outside a
localized post-cold war conflicts, the Foxhound tems may have to wait for a day until the satellite revetment.

passes within their range,” he explains. “Air launch and spend a lot of rubles, before the MiG-31 can
gives you more flexibility.” realistically crack this backbone. But its ability to
Many critical U.S.-NATO satellites circle beyond carry massive new weapons has at least earned the
Kinzhal/Missile X’s reach in geostationary or medi- aging system one more reprieve. In 2015, Moscow’s
um-Earth orbits (where the GPS constellation is). defense ministry announced it would upgrade 130
But the low-Earth-orbit tier is also packed with aircraft to the latest -31BM modification by 2030.
assets that need closer proximity for higher-reso- The monster roars on.
lution images of a given tactical theater, Kofman
ITS ABILITY TO CARRY MASSIVE NEW The USSR may have been decaying internally by
WEAPONS HAS AT LEAST EARNED the late 1970s. But it maintained the will, and con-
THE AGING SYSTEM ONE MORE siderable means, to match the U.S. stride for stride
in the great superpower arms race. “The Soviet
REPRIEVE. IN 2015, MOSCOW’S
Union collapsed at the peak of its technological
DEFENSE MINISTRY ANNOUNCED IT might,” Kofman observes.
WOULD UPGRADE 130 AIRCRAFT TO The immediate catalyst for the MiG-31 was
THE LATEST -31BM MODIFICATION. the Western capture of its predecessor, a MiG-25
“Foxbat,” in 1976, when pilot Viktor Belenko flew
it to Japan and requested political asylum. Belenko
revealed more secrets about the airplane’s short-
comings than its prowess. Free World analysts had
been overawed by the Foxbat’s Mach 3 speed. This
turned to be largely for show. “At Mach 2.8 the
says. Troops on the ground have come to rely on engines overheated, and the four air-to-air mis-
these connections, rather like the average citizen siles slung under the wings vibrated dangerously,”
on their home internet. “We’re pretty dependent on relates a historical account on the Russia Beyond
space-based assets for precision-guided weapons, the Headlines website. (Windshields also tended
real-time target-tracking, a lot of the backbone of to ice over because ground crews would drink the
SPUTNIK
modern conflict,” he says. preventive measure, grain alcohol, before take-off.)

Russia’s military needs to connect a lot of dots, The -31 was ready for test flights within three

years of this revelation, with dramatic improve- mouths by an alarmed fireman. The -31 wasn’t
ments. Its engines produced less thrust, but ran out of gas after all, and they were standing in a
more reliably. The length of the aircraft was puddle of kerosene.
extended to make room for a second crew mem- Menitsky’s direct boss, MiG head test pilot
ber, who handled navigation and weapons. But the Alexander Fedotov, was not so lucky, according to
most impressive innovation was its Zaslon radar a post-glasnost report by Russian historian Andrey
system (Flash Dance in NATO parlance), the first Simonov. The fuel system failed again on a modi-
passive electronically scanned array system to be fication of the -31 he was putting through its paces
mounted on a fighter. In a demonstration in 1991,
when the peaceful climate allowed the MiG-31 to
appear at the Paris Air Show, that Zaslon radar THE MIG-31 NEVER GOT THE RESPECT
was the envy of all who witnessed it, according ITS ENGINEERING BREAKTHROUGHS
to a memoir by MiG test pilot Valery Menitsky. DESERVED. IT WAS OUTSHONE FROM THE
The Zaslon could lock on six targets simultane- START BY THE S U-27, WHICH MILITARY
ously (though the -31 carried only four missiles).
Critically, it added “look-down, shoot-down” PARADE ANNOUNCERS WOULD GUSH ON
capability, enabling the R-33 air-to-air missiles ABOUT “FOR SIX OR SEVEN MINUTES,”
with which the -31 is typically armed to strike WHILE NODDING TO THE -31 WITH HALF A
targets at lower altitudes, like a cruise missile for SENTENCE.
instance. The MiG-25 could only shoot upward.
Still, the haste and ambition of the MiG-31
project took its toll. Menitsky himself barely
survived a test flight gone awry. With the fuel
gauge plummeting mysteriously toward empty,
he crash-landed at Zhukovskoe without power
at 292 mph, destroyed a concrete runway barrier, in 1984. It showed all tanks empty a few minutes
and rolled almost a mile before finally stopping. into the flight. Fedotov also returned to base for
Climbing from the cockpit unharmed, Menitsky an emergency landing without engines. But in fact
and his wingman lit cigarettes to steady their the airplane had 12.5 tons (3,000 gallons) of fuel
nerves, only to have them yanked from their in its tanks. In free-fall with this immense weight,
SPUTNIK

At the Pacific Fleet’s
Kamchatka air base
in Prymorye, or
coastal territory, a
MiG-31 is readied
for a training
exercise to test its
capabilities as an
interceptor. The
region is the site of
Russia’s only shared
border with North
Korea, and its
shortest.
the aircraft was destroyed on impact. Fedotov, production of an analog, Shenyang J-11, to China.
who had earned his country’s highest military There was one mission, however, that only the
honor—Hero of the Soviet Union—testing every MiG-31 could handle: chasing SR-71s across the
MiG model since the early 1960s, did not survive endless Soviet borders and keeping the Blackbird
a last-second parachute attempt. Co-pilot Valery respectfully at the edge of international airspace.
Zaitsev died with him. The Central Intelligence Agency went to work on
what became the SR-71 Blackbird at the famous
Lockheed Skunk Works after the Soviets downed
Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 from the suppos-
The MiG-31 never got the respect its engineering edly unreachable altitude of 62,000 feet in 1960.
breakthroughs, and his friend’s sacrifice, deserved The Blackbird first flew U.S. Air Force missions
at home either, Menitsky complained. It was out- over Vietnam, then shifted to monitoring Soviet
shone from the start by the Su-27, which military naval assets in 1976, flying a northern route from
parade announcers would gush on about “for six Mildenhall air base in the U.K. and a Far Eastern
or seven minutes,” while nodding to the -31 with loop from California’s Beale Air Force Base.
half a sentence. “Certain leaders of the Sukhoi firm Soviet defenders saw no hope of hitting the
and their lobbyists from the Defense Ministry SR-71 from the ground. The new craft could fly,
supported a campaign begun by Sukhoi’s chief and snap pictures, at 80,000 feet or more, cruising
constructor to burnish the image of the Su-27 at at an unheard-of Mach 3.3. “This was a different
the expense of the MiG-31,” Menitsky seethed in threat,” Grinberg says. The SR-71 could fly any-
his reminiscences. where with impunity.
There is some truth in this, according to Ilya Well, not quite impunity, once the MiG-31 took
Grinberg, a professor of engineering technology off after it. The -31 gave away 10,000 to 15,000
at SUNY Buffalo State who earned his Ph.D. at feet in altitude and 350-some mph in speed. But
Moscow State University of Civil Engineering. coordinated squadrons could keep the solo-flying
Ground crew arm a Legendary designers Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail SR-71 well within missile range, all the more so
MiG-31 at Gurevich, the “M” and “G” in MiG, both died in as the Americans flew fixed, more-or-less exact
Tsentrainaya
Uglovaya airfield. A
the 1970s. Their successor, Rostislav Belyakov, routes for the best views of their recon targets. “If
complement of four “believed MiG’s products would prove themselves,” the SR-71 had violated Soviet airspace, a live missile
R-33 missiles, each while Sukhoi boss Mikhail Simonov “was a mas- launch would have been carried out,” pilot Mikhail
theoretically ter of schmoozing and lobbying.” But the lighter, Myagkiy recalled in an excerpt reproduced in Paul
capable of downing nimbler Su-27 (Western code name “Flanker”) Crickmore’s book: Lockheed Blackbird: Beyond the
an enemy from 180
miles away, are
also proved much better suited to the post-cold Secret Missions. “There was practically no chance
SPUTNIK
standard armament war era. Russia has exported it or its modification, that the aircraft could avoid an R-33.” The SR-71
for the Foxhound. the Su-35, to half a dozen countries and licensed pilots never tested Myagkiy’s boast. They “tickled”

on delusions of grandeur. Memoirist Menitsky
imagined his U.S. Air Force counterparts living
in terror. “The appearance of the MiG-31 shook
the pilots who flew SR-71,” he writes. “They wrote
to all their top commanders that they experienced
psychological pressure from flights along Russia’s
borders, and asked to change the routes throughout
our Far East. Soon the flights stopped.”
More objective historians beg to differ. It’s not
even clear that the American pilots knew the
MiG-31s were after them, according to Valery
Romanenko, a Ukrainian expert in Russian mil-
itary aviation who helped Crickmore with the
research for his SR-71 book. Publicly, American
generals cited the Blackbird’s cost and improving
alternative intel from satellites when they retired
The mysterious (and the border on occasion, but never crossed it, the the aircraft in 1989.
enormous) new Soviet captain related. Without its nemesis, or the free-spending
missile carried by
this MiG-31has
So twice a week, through the last burst of cold Soviet war machine that collapsed two years later,
been a subject of war tension during the Reagan years, the world’s the MiG-31 fell on hard times. China reportedly
intense speculation. fastest aircraft staged a secret supersonic ballet looked at buying 24 Foxhounds in 1992 with
Is it a presumptive above the forbidding coasts of Novaya Zemlya and an eye on a domestic copycat, but opted for the
satellite killer or a the White Sea. Myagkiy once got close enough to Su-27 instead—one more blow to Valery Menitsky
multi-warhead
defensive weapon to
put naked eyes on his enemy, and saved a print- and other MiG die-hards. Valery Romanenko at
fell incoming out of the flight’s black box data as a keepsake. “A one point consulted with Nigerian procurement
hypersonic missiles? contrail at 22,000-23,000 meters is very rare,” he officials thinking of buying -31s for their (lim-
wrote. “But on this day the weather was excellent ited) AWACS capabilities. He talked them out
and the air was transparent. I passed under the of it. Active regiments flying the -31 contracted
spyplane, it was 3,000-4,000 meters above us, and from seven to two, Romanenko says. From this
even managed to make out its black silhouette.” shrinking contingent, 14 airplanes crashed and
If nothing else, the SR-71 chase gave MiG-31 burned between 1995 and 2016, according to
crews, isolated on cheerless bases from Murmansk official reports Grinberg and Romanenko collated,
to Kamchatka, a sense of purpose that could border though thankfully all the pilots survived.
At Yelizovo airfield,
a Foxhound awaits
clearance to launch.
MINISTRY OF DEFENSE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

In 2018, a formation The first hint of a comeback arrived in 2009, be useful is another question.
of MiG-31s rehearses according to Bart Hendrickx’s research, when One reason the U.S. counter-space program
for a Victory Parade Russia’s air force chief announced the MiG-31 of the 1980s killed only one test satellite was the
flyover in Moscow
commemorating
“was being upgraded to perform the same space volume of post-impact debris, which could harm
Russia’s triumph over missions as in the Soviet days.” Not much was heard any of the 1,000-some other craft currently sharing
the Axis powers in on this score until early 2017, when another top low Earth orbit, Harrison says. “An air-launched
the Second World commander told defense ministry media outlet anti-satellite weapon is a serious and credible
War.
Zvezda that a new missile mounted on the MiG- threat, but I’m not sure it would be that useful in
31BM would be “capable of destroying targets in the same orbital regime that the Russians might
near space.” use themselves.” He sees the future in lasers that
The plot thickened in March 2018 when Putin can temporarily blind satellites without blasting
announced the existence of the Kinzhal. In July them perilously to bits. Directed-energy weapons
of that year, TASS reported that MiG-31s had might also be used covertly, as the victimized
held drills armed with the new hypersonic threat country would want to keep the attack secret. “If
and been designated “the basic carrier of Kinzhal we say something, we’re admitting to them that
hypersonic missiles today.” In September the noto- the attack was effective,” Harrison explains. “So
rious photo of the -31 with Missile X in its belly it’s likely no one would ever know.”
appeared, posted by a Russian aviation paparazzo Russia could also attempt to blind its enemies
who uses the tag ShipSash. using Nudol, a ground-based anti-satellite mis-
sile system parked at the Plesetsk cosmodrome.
Russia has conducted at least 10 tests of the sys-
tem since 2014.
Do these scattered clues mean the MiG-31will be If Russia really wants to incapacitate an adver-
a key part of the arsenal of a resurgent Russia as sary’s satellite, there are ways to do it that wouldn’t
the battlefield moves into low Earth orbit? Space require them to rely on the high-altitude marks-
will likely be a combat theater if big powers come manship of a 40-year-old airplane. But to under-
to blows again, and knocking out satellites should estimate the aging Foxhound would be a mistake.
be relatively simple. After all, their orbits are fixed It’s like the old Russian saying: Something new—
SPUTNIK
and they can’t easily take evasive action. and in this case, dangerous—is something old that
Whether destroying an enemy satellite would everyone has forgotten.

SATELLITE
RESCUE
NEW SPACECRAFT WILL REFUEL, REFURBISH, AND
RELOCATE SATELLITES IN ORBIT—MAYBE EVEN
WASH THE WINDSHIELDS.

On Monday, February 24, 2020, at about 9 p.m. nical hiccups. Like a magic lamp releasing a genie, Technicians at
U.S. Eastern time, a robotic spacecraft named satellites must unfold various components after Northrop Grumman
MEV-1 is traveling some 22,000 miles above the separating from their launch vehicles. But things Innovation Systems
in Dulles, Virginia
Pacific Ocean in a geosynchronous orbit. A satel- can get stuck. “It might be a solar array or antenna rehearse the
lite at that location holds a fixed position over the that doesn’t deploy correctly, and it simply needs delicate procedure
equator because its speed matches that of Earth’s a nudge,” he says. by which MEV-1,
rotation. At the moment, MEV-1, which stands Satellites also suffer component failures, such as their satellite tug,
for Mission Extension Vehicle-1, is in pursuit of decayed batteries and computers, or malfunctions will dock with
IS-901, a 19-year-
its client, a $200 million satellite called IS-901. in propulsion and attitude-control systems. old satellite in need
Intelsat owns and operates the satellite, which The decision to retire a satellite versus fixing of renewal.
was launched 19 years ago. In December, IS-901 or refueling it is a straightforward calculation
reached the end of its expected that measures future revenue
lifespan, and because it was low BY MICHAEL BEHAR against the servicing cost. Many
on fuel and unable to remain sta- commercial satellites generate
tionary over the equator, Intelsat commanded millions of dollars per year in revenue, explains
onboard thrusters to push the satellite 185 miles Joseph Parrish, program manager for the Defense
farther from Earth, into the so-called “graveyard Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
orbit,” where geo spacecraft go to die. Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites
Such is the fate of satellites, Joe Anderson tells program. “So, if you could extend the life of those
NORTHROP GRUMMAN
me. Anderson is vice president of SpaceLogistics, spacecraft for just a few years at a cost that’s sig-
LLC, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary. “The vast nificantly less than their revenue over that period,
majority of satellites are decommissioned primarily it’s a win-win for both the servicer and the client.”
because they have run out of fuel,” he says. Others Northrop Grumman’s MEV-1 was sent to extend
in the graveyard orbit may have experienced tech- a life. The first robotic spacecraft designed to res-

cue ailing satellites, it was assigned to dock with development and launch for the first MEV. “Just a
IS-901—a feat never before attempted between couple of months later we had our first contract for
two uncrewed commercial spacecraft—and then five years of life-extension service with Intelsat.”
function “as a jet pack,” as Anderson puts it. Fueled Now, eight years after the first serious consid-
with xenon gas, MEV-1 will use its electric-pro- erations of satellite servicing, MEV-1 is about to
pulsion thrusters to tow IS-901 back to geo orbit,
then haul it halfway around the world to a new
position over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will ASSUMING THE MISSION SUCCEEDS,
take over for another aging Intelsat spacecraft. IT WILL NOT ONLY MAKE HISTORY
Industry analysts at Northern Sky Research BUT ALSO HERALD THE BIRTH
in Cambridge, Massachusetts last year projected
revenues for the in-orbit satellite servicing market OF AN ENTIRELY NEW INDUSTRY.
would reach $4.5 billion by 2028. They predicted
growth in salvage operations, defunct satellite
disposals, robotic repairs and inspections, orbital
relocations, and refueling services. Their projec-
tions are bullish considering that today most satel-
lites still are helpless when something goes awry.
Northrop Grumman is hoping to change that. dock with IS-901. Assuming the mission succeeds,
MEV-1 was launched in October 2019 and took it will not only make history but also herald the
139 days to reach IS-901. (Electric thrusters are birth of an entirely new industry.
dreadfully slow but extremely efficient.) Now,
in late February 2020 at Northrop Grumman
Innovation Systems in Dulles, Virginia, the STATION TO STATION
Mission Operations Center is bustling with ground Satellites need fuel to perform “station-keep-
controllers and engineers overseeing the MEV-1 ing” maneuvers using small chemical or electric
docking. Anderson is here for the big moment. thrusters. “Their orbit is always changing because
His eyes are glued to wall-mounted monitors of gravitational forces from the Earth, sun, and
receiving live video feed from eight cameras moon,” explains Anderson. “Most satellites are
aboard MEV-1.
When IS-901 first comes into view, it’s a shim-
mering speck amid a black void, like a diamond
in a tar pit. MEV-1 stops at its “far hold” position,
about 260 feet from IS-901.
The MEV has been in development since
the mid-2000s, when aerospace firm Alliant
Techsystems, or ATK, began exploring the fea-
sibility of servicing spacecraft in geo, where some
500 satellites are in orbit. Anderson, who had
spent 20 years at Intelsat, moved to ATK in 2012,
believing it had the money and expertise to make
the MEV happen. After a series of mergers and
buyouts endemic to the aerospace industry, the
project—and Anderson—wound up at Northrop
Grumman.
Developing the necessary rendezvous and
docking technologies took time and money. “We
suffered a classic innovator’s dilemma,” Anderson
says. “We had no financing because we had no
customer commitments, and we had no customer
commitments because we were not financed.” It
wasn’t until 2016 that ATK decided to fund the
When Intelsat 603 stalled in low Earth orbit, it

required an expensive 1992 space shuttle mission to
capture and relaunch it. MEV-1 aims to make such
orbital corrections far simpler and cheaper to
perform.

From its “near-hold” doing maneuvers weekly, and that’s why they run
position of 60 feet out of fuel.” Before launch, fuel is added through
away before docking
a port called a fill/drain valve: The tank is topped
with IS-901, MEV-1
snapped a historic off and a cap is sealed to the inlet (the drain is for
portrait of its client emergencies while still on the ground).
on February 25, A thick multi-layer insulation blanket, or MLI,
2020. The tug is wrapped around the satellite to further protect
returned IS-901 to
service in a new
it from dust and debris, sealing it up like a sub-
orbit 36 days later. marine swaddled in tinfoil. With the blanket in
The successful place, it would be hard for a repair robot to access
relocation could any components that aren’t attached to the bus
portend a dramatic exterior, such as solar arrays, radio antennas,
reshaping of the
space industry.
sensors, and cameras.
It’s for this reason that Northrop Grumman
opted to make MEV perform more like a tow
truck than a mechanic, albeit a tow truck that stays
affixed to the car long-term. “We believe in keep-
ing it simple,” Anderson says. MEV-1 will remain
attached to IS-901 for five years, at which point
it will return the satellite to the graveyard orbit,
where it’ll be decommissioned. Then MEV-1 will
fly to its next client and repeat the docking and
renewal procedure. By this time, a second mis- the satellite uses one of the common cone-shape
TOP AND BOTTOM: NASA (2)
sion-extension spacecraft, MEV-2 will be in geo liquid apogee engines, then MEV-1 can very likely
orbit, hitched to another Intelsat client. Each MEV latch on to it. Satellites that use a different engine
can service up to 10 satellites, or remain with the design would stymie the repair craft.
same one for the entirety of its 15-year design life. Anderson won’t tell me how much Northrop
“We’ve built it to be compatible with about 70 to Grumman charges for this service, but assures
80 percent of all geo satellites,” Anderson says. If me the business model is compelling to satellite
operators. “We could service low Earth orbit too,”
he says. “If there’s a market there, we’ll go.”
HISTORY HAS ITS EYES ON YOU

Northrop Grumman isn’t the only group prepar-
ing to service satellites. NASA and DARPA are
also planning missions, and DARPA’s Parrish tells
me, “The entire on-orbit servicing community is
watching [MEV-1’s] progress with great interest,
hoping for the very best on that mission.”
That’s part of what makes Anderson nervous
while he waits for MEV-1 to move from its “near-
hold” position 60 feet from IS-901 to the “capture
box” position roughly three feet from the client.
The journey between the two points takes about 45
minutes. At the end of that period, IS-901’s control-
lers place it into a free-drift state, meaning simply
that they are no longer controlling its attitude.
Now the moment of truth has arrived: Northrop
Grumman controllers send the MEV-1 the com-
mand to begin its autonomous docking procedure.
Now the seconds feel like minutes to Anderson.
“This is where my heart really starts beating, because
it’s the point of no return,” he says.
Having received the command to commence
docking, MEV-1 is untethered from its puppe-
teers in Virginia. Both satellites are now in tight
formation, drifting in tandem at thousands of miles

per hour. The most minute maneuvering error to launch in 2023. Once in orbit—at an altitude
could be catastrophic. That’s because the distance of about 435 miles—it will attempt to refuel the
between Earth and geo orbit creates a communi- $500 million Landsat 7, an Earth-imaging satel-
cations delay, or latency, of about 540 milliseconds lite launched in 1999 and operated by the U.S.
round-trip. A half-second doesn’t sound like much, Geological Survey and NASA. OSAM-1 will be
but it’s way too long for an operator in Virginia equipped with three robotic arms: two built at
to safely mate two spacecraft 22,000 miles away. NASA Goddard (one is essentially a backup for the
Hence the need for both spacecraft to be placed other) and a third built by Maxar, a space technol-
in an autonomous state. “The reason we go ‘open ogy company in Westminster, Colorado. Maxar’s
loop’ is so there are no other forces in the system,” apparatus, called SPIDER (for Space Infrastructure
Anderson explains. “Having a human in the loop Dexterous Robot), is based on similar arms the
would just get in the way.” company has built for NASA’s Mars landers.
He’s been awake for nearly 20 hours when “We are flying a robot arm for the first time
ground controllers declare that IS-901 has been that will manipulate a fill/drain valve on a satel-
captured at exactly 2:15 a.m. EST on Tuesday, lite,” says Brent Robertson, the OSAM-1 project
February 25, 2020. IS-901 returned to service in manager. The NASA arm will grab a ring encir-
its new orbit on April 2. cling the base of Landsat 7, a Marman clamp that
Northrop Grumman’s success gives satellite fastened the spacecraft to its launch vehicle. Next,
operators like Intelsat their first proof that servic- the arm will guide Landsat 7 into so-called “berth-
ing in orbit is possible. It’s also deeply encouraging ing posts,” where it will be secured to its rescue
to engineers at DARPA and NASA, who are pur- satellite. Now free from holding Landsat 7, the
suing considerably more ambitious and complex arm will use its tool set to cut away the insulation
satellite-servicing missions. blanket, snip locking wires around the fill/drain
valve, and unscrew its cap. Then OSAM-1 will
add 254 pounds of fuel. That will allow Landsat 7
ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE IN ORBIT to maintain its orbit for years, and eventually to
At NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in perform de-orbiting maneuvers. OSAM-1 will
Maryland, the OSAM-1 mission is in planning. carry more than 6,000 pounds of biopropellant
Formerly known as Restore-L, with the “L” denot- fuel to allow it to intercept and dock with other
ing low Earth orbit, OSAM-1 (the acronym is for “clients” should its one-year mission be extended.
On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Maintenance) Besides refueling, the OSAM-1 spacecraft will
is focused not on geo, as the MEVs are, but on low demonstrate assembly and manufacturing. Because
Earth orbit, home to approximately 2,200 active there is no dirt in space, it’s possible for OSAM-1
satellites. The OSAM-1 spacecraft is scheduled to disassemble and reassemble a satellite for ser-
A Northrop
Grumman
technician tests the
corkscrew-probe
tool the satellite tug
MEV-1 will use
months later to latch
onto a com-sat and
carry it to a new
geosynchronous
orbit.
NORTHROP GRUMMAN

vicing with little contamination risk. collector hauling away space junk.
This is where SPIDER comes in. OSAM-1 will I ask Anderson whether our military could con-
carry a segmented radio dish antenna into orbit, vert a servicing satellite into a weapon, perhaps
which SPIDER will put together. “We’re going using it to dismantle an enemy spacecraft. After
to send a [radio] signal through that antenna to all, it’s DARPA, I point out, that’s developing
ground stations,” Robertson explains. “And then satellites with the most complex and versatile
we’re going to disassemble the antenna and assem- robotic capabilities. He quickly dispels my prop-
ble it again to show it’s a repeatable task.” Next, osition. “It’s really in the realm of science fiction,”
OSAM-1 will manufacture a rigid 10-meter beam, he says. “To do it without the cooperation of a
extruding fused carbon from a device that works client would essentially mean the termination off
something like a Play-Doh squeeze press. “The my servicing vehicle.” It would be impossible to
beam will have the associated stiffness appropri- maintain a safe separation between both spacecraft,
ate for assembling a spacecraft,” Robertson says. since the “enemy” satellite would have to be in an
The tough part of OSAM’s mission—refuel- open loop for a docking to succeed. “It’s very easy
ing—is not on the to-do list of DARPA’s Robotic for someone to see an MEV approaching another
Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites program. spacecraft because it’s moving so slowly [relative
An artist’s conception “It’s an incredible technical feat to be able to do to the other spacecraft],” says Anderson. “You can’t
of DARPA’s OSAM-1 that,” reckons Parrish. “The [OSAM-1] team has really do this in secret.”
craft depicts an spent years developing the technology. They’ve Parrish believes the RSGS could handle almost
all-purpose “roadside
assistance” vehicle
done numerous experiments and demonstrations any type of servicing job because its robotic capa-
for errant satellites. in space to back up their analyses and simulations bilities can be augmented later. “We don’t have to
Its three dexterous on the ground.” Instead, the RSGS is inventing imagine every tool we might ever need because
limbs will allow it to an orbiting handyman. The spacecraft will carry we can fly up new ones on future spacecraft,” he
not only capture and dual six-foot-long robotic arms that can extend, says. But among the most prized achievements
refuel depleted
satellites, but to
flex, and rotate with seven degrees of freedom— would be saving a brand-new multi-million-dol-
disassemble and nearly identical to human dexterity. “There is lar satellite that encounters a glitch not long after
repair them too. The also a wrist mechanism that allows for tools to it enters orbit—one that would be fatal without
spacecraft’s first be interchanged,” Parrish notes. servicing. Says Parrish: “We can gallop in with
mission is set for
After it launches in late 2022, the geo-orbiting our robotic system to the rescue. Now that would
2023.
RSGS spacecraft will employ powerful radar and be a great day!”
sensors to inspect satellites. “We can fly around
the client and take images without ever touching
it,” explains Parrish. If it spots any damage, the MADE IN SPACE
RSGS will grasp the Marman clamp on a client Refueling and repairing satellites could extend
satellite with one arm, leaving the other free to their lifespans significantly, sparing operators
make repairs. The RSGS craft also could move the exorbitant expense of replacing them. The
its client to a new position in geo or relocate a task would be easier if satellite builders adopted
NASA
dead satellite to the graveyard orbit, like a trash technical standards. DARPA has funded an indus-

try organization called CONFERS (Consortium going to Mars, or maintaining the [International
for Execution of Rendezvous and Servicing Space Station], or building new, much larger tele-
Operations) to develop such standards. But not scopes—to enable these missions you need this core
all members agree on how to proceed. “There are capability.” According to Tadros, once the RSGS
two sides to the coin,” Anderson tells me. “One demonstration mission is completed, Maxar will
side says that setting standards too early will stifle offer in-orbit assembly to its commercial customers.
innovation. The other side believes standards can
help grow the market.” Parrish adds: “It’s always
been a chicken and egg situation. Spacecraft devel- SEND UP THE SPECIALISTS
opers didn’t [design their satellites to be service- The various approaches to satellite-servicing—tow
able in orbit] because there was no servicer. And truck, refueling, and robotic repairs—serve spe-
there was no servicer because there was nothing cific niches, contend the experts. “I think there are
up there that was accommodating. In the future, good and valid applications for each,” Anderson
we hope that satellites will be designed to accom- says. “Our customers are risk-adverse. Our MEV
modate on-orbit refueling. That will make this
operation much simpler, take less time, and be
more economical than the operations needed to “ WE CAN FLY AROUND THE CLIENT
refuel an unprepared spacecraft.” AND TAKE IMAGES WITHOUT EVER
Because OSAM-1 is focused on refueling, TOUCHING IT, USING CAMERAS AS
Goddard engineers have developed a robot-friendly MICROSCOPES, GETTING WITHIN A
fuel cap. “We call it the cooperative servicing CENTIMETER.”
valve,” Robertson says. “We wouldn’t have to cut
wire or MLI blankets. It would require one tool to — J O S E P H PAR R I S H , D E F E N S E ADVAN C E D
refuel, as opposed to flying six right now.” NASA RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY
has licensed its design to satellite manufacturers,
which plan to integrate it into future spacecraft.
“We’re actually going to fly it on OSAM-1 to allow
us to be refueled,” says Robertson.
What gets program managers most excited,
however, is the promise of in-orbit assembly—and
not just for satellites. NASA is paying Maxar $142 is a small increment of technology development
million to design and build the SPIDER arm for and, therefore, much lower risk than the ‘satellite
OSAM-1. But Al Tadros, vice president of space surgery’ required to perform refueling on a satellite
infrastructure at Maxar, tells me his engineers that was not originally prepared for refueling.”
envision much broader applications. “The mission But he also believes that OSAM-1 “will definitely
is very much to advance technology for NASA have business benefits. Once proven feasible…it
and for the U.S. industry,” he says. “For humans will be able to refuel a vehicle and extend the lives
A Maxar
Technologies
rendering depicts
the firm’s Space
Infrastructure
Dexterous Robot
(SPIDER) bolting
together a
seven-panel
communications
antenna in orbit.
SPIDER is also
expected to build a
spacecraft beam
during its first
deployment in 2023.
MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES

In the fall of 2016, of several satellites per year, while our MEV can tic tests on new spacecraft. Every satellite must
Robotic Systems only extend one satellite a time. Refueling may be withstand the violent forces experienced during
Engineer Zakiya a better solution for many healthy satellites due to liftoff from Earth.
Tomlinson trains
at NASA Goddard
the potential for lower costs than a dedicated MEV, Maryland Sound provides audio for rock con-
Space Flight or for satellites that have special operational needs, certs and the Fourth of July celebration on the
Center with like many military satellites. But there is definitely National Mall. You wouldn’t think they’d also be
software that will need in the market for both types of services.” in the spaceflight business.
support OSAM-1’s Northrop Grumman is also working with That’s where you’d be wrong. Northrop
satellite-servicing
capability. OSAM-1
DARPA and its RSGS program to develop Grumman has hired the company to simulate
and similar so-called Mission Extension Pods, or MEPs. These the ear-pummeling, bone-rattling sonic barrage
spacecraft have the are self-contained servicing pods designed to do of a rocket launch. The formal name for this pro-
potential to create propulsion and attitude control. cedure is Direct Field Acoustic Testing.
a new industry—
“The servicer installs the MEP to the client and “They build these towers of speakers requiring
and a new future
for space then flies away,” Parrish explains. “This opera- one million watts of power,” Anderson says. “When
exploration. tion doesn’t tie up the servicer for an extended they do it, stuff in my office shakes.”
period.” At the same time, he isn’t betting on any This is why satellites cost so much and are so
specific approach just yet. “I don’t think that any- bulky and heavy: They must be robust enough to
one knows how this is going to play out,” Parrish withstand the clamor and stress of the hellacious
says. “When I first entered this domain, refueling ride into space.
was the application everyone was focused on. But, “If we could just take up the panels and materials,
so far, we’ve seen only one commercial servicing it would weigh one-tenth of the mass of what we
operation and that is MEV-1 doing attached life launch today,” Anderson says.
extension. I think the role of the technologists Spacecraft assembled in orbit could not only
and the servicing system designers is to develop be lighter but also much larger. We are centuries
a wide variety of servicing modalities and then from the sprawling ocean liner-size starships of
let the market decide which is best.” science-fiction sagas. Nevertheless, the dawn of
NASA/GSFC
At Northrop Grumman, Anderson shows me satellite servicing and in-orbit assembly puts us
where technicians conduct vibration and acous- squarely on that trajectory.

ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR II, A SERIES OF
HEADLINE-GRABBING FLIGHTS PROVED
THE GENIUS OF JAPAN’S AIRPLANE DESIGNERS.
● BY KEN SCOTT
THE JAPANESE
LINDBERGHS
ALL OVER THE WORLD IN 1937, ROYAL HOUSES
U PREPARED TO TRAVEL
o London for the coronation of Britain’s
a Kingg George g VI andd his wife
Elizabeth. From Japan, Emperor Hirohito dispatched, by sea, a crown
prince and princess as his official envoys—and, to the amazement of
many Westerners who considered the Far East a technological back-
water, a Japanese newspaper sent a pair of Japanese airmen who made
the 9,600-mile journey in a state-of-the-art airplane, the Mitsubishi
Ki-15. They arrived a full month before the May 12 ceremony and left
for home on May 14, delivering one week later photos and accounts of
the London coronation scene to their sponsor in Tokyo. In the process,
they became national heroes.
The flight of the Mitsubishi Ki-15 was the first of an impressive
series of Japanese distance and endurance flights during the buildup to
World War II—achievements that apparently
pp y registered
g no alarm amongg Some 6,000 curiosity-seekers
Western observers at the time and are often forgotten by Westerners greeted Masaaki Iinuma (left)
and Kenji Tsukagoshi at
today. A point of national pride in Japan, the flights were a completely
London’s Croydon Airport.
Japanese effort: The airplanes and engines were designed and built in Despite a grueling flight, the
Japan, and the Japanese crews trained solely by Japanese instructors. airmen spent the next month
Japan’s military then controlled most of the country’s aviation, but on a goodwill tour of Europe.
Japan was an air-minded country and its major newspapers—Asahi
Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun (both still publishing)—maintained avia-
tion departments to speed reports and photographs to their presses, in
competition to scoop each other. Not satisfied with simply reporting
the news, the papers made their own, capitalizing on their air prowess
to stage spectacular flights that generated interest and sales.

If any trained aviators from the West had fought their way through
the hordes of photographers and reporters surrounding the Ki-15, the
airplane would have given them serious pause. The handsome two-
seat monoplane, powered by a reliable nine-cylinder Nakajima radial
engine, was named Kamikaze, or Divine Wind. (In 1937, the name
had not begun its dreadful association with suicide flights.) Even with
fixed landing gear, the Mitsubishi managed a top speed of 300 mph
and a range of 1,300 nautical miles. The U.S. Navy’s frontline fighter
AP/SHUTTERSTOCK
at the time was the chunky Grumman F3F biplane, and Britain’s Royal
Air Force had just started flying the Fairey Battle, which was 50 mph
slower than the Mitsubishi despite having 300 more horsepower and
retractable landing gear.

Kamikaze’s crew was just as impressive. Pilot brief stops in Basra and Baghdad. Comparatively Kamikaze preparing
Masaaki Iinuma was a highly experienced pilot short hops took them to Rome, then to Le Bourget for takeoff at Taipei.
at only 24 years old. Flying for Asahi since 1932, airfield in Paris. When they landed at Croydon, Iinuma and
Tsukagoshi reached
he had made many trips around Japan and long on the outskirts of London, they had covered the Taipei on their
flights to Manchuria and Taiwan. He was also 9,600-mile route in a flying time of just 51 hours, second attempt—
movie-star handsome—another boost for circu- 19 minutes—a new record. their first was turned
lation. Flight engineer Kenji Tsukagoshi, 38, was Iinuma and Tsukagoshi used the time between back due to bad
weather.
Iinuma’s choice for flight engineer, radio operator, their arrival and the coronation to make a goodwill
navigator, and companion. The son of an English
mother and Japanese father, he became one of the
most respected technicians in Japanese aviation. AFTER ASAHI SHIMBUN’S TRIUMPH,
He and Iinuma formed such a tight team that their COMPETITOR MAINICHI SHIMBUN
compatriots often combined their last names, BEGAN PLANNING ITS RESPONSE. IF
referring to “Mr. Iitsuka.” ASAHI COULD FLY A SINGLE-ENGINE
Iinuma and Tsukagoshi made the trip from AIRPLANE TO ENGLAND AND BACK,
Tokyo to London’s Croydon Airport in only
three days, between April 6 and April 9. Their MAINICHI WOULD FLY A TWIN-ENGINE
route crossed broad tracts of jungle and open AIRPLANE AROUND THE WORLD.
ocean, flying five- and six-hour legs against the
prevailing winds in tropical heat and humidity on
seat cushions that left them shifting in pain. In the
first phase of the journey, the pilots left Japan at
two a.m. and landed in Taipei, taking off again at
10:20 a.m. for the westbound jaunt to Hanoi. After
an hour on the ground, they were again airborne, tour of Europe, visiting Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and
finally ending their day in Vientiane, Laos. With Rome, before returning to England. And they were
four hours’ sleep they launched again, crossing welcomed: banquets, receptions, and photo ops
IINUMA MUSEUM
the Bay of Bengal and northern India to Karachi, with VIPs—faces and places all blending together
where they lodged with Japanese expatriates. The into a haze of fatigue. At least in Paris they man-
next day they crossed Iran and reached Athens with aged a meeting with the mother of French pilot

André Japy, an adventurer dear to their hearts. In Named Nippon, it was powered by two Mitsubishi
late 1936, Japy had attempted a flight from Paris radial engines. Stripped of armament, the airplane
to Tokyo, which ended in a crash on the Japanese was fitted with an autopilot and fuel tanks capable
island of Kyushu. He was severely injured, and of 2,400 nautical miles. Somehow a crew of seven
while he was recovering, he learned that Asahi managed to stuff themselves into the slim fuselage.
was planning a flight along much the same route Sumitoshi Nakao was in command, with copilot
he had taken. He sent the chart of his flight to Shigeo Yoshida. Flight engineer-mechanics Hiroshi
Asahi, hoping it would help the Japanese pilots. Saeki and Hajime Shimokawa looked after the air-
Iinuma and Tsukagoshi carried the bloodstained craft. Nobusada Sato handled the radio gear, and
document with them and were quite touched by Chosaku Yaokawa assisted with communications
their meeting with Madame Japy. and maintenance chores.
Iinuma was dubbed the “Japanese Lindbergh” The seventh man was Takeo Ohara, who had
during their European tour, but a better com- nothing to do with flying. He was Mainichi’s good-
parison might have been with Antoine de Saint- will ambassador, and it is Ohara’s writing, again
Exupéry: Like Saint Ex, Iinuma cultivated both
flying skill and a poetic soul. He kept a journal
In Japan, of the 1937 trip, which upon his return to Japan
celebrations erupted formed the basis of a popular book, Koku Zuiso.
upon Kamikaze’s
successful flight.
In 2008, American pilot Marici Reid found a copy
Postcards were and spent months translating it into English. From
printed (like this Iinuma’s writings, we glimpse a thoughtful aes-
one, showing the thete. Of flight over the Annamese Mountains of
route flown), sake northern Vietnam, he wrote, “Should you land in
brewed, and a
symphony written in
these mountains, it would be the end. You would
Kamikaze’s honor. never return to the world of men.” And as they
climbed out over Italy, bound for France, Iinuma
wrote that “the Alps spread out on our right, a
succession of mountain thrones crowned with
pure white snow. All the difficulties of our flight
are worthwhile just to see this view.” The two
may well have been the first Japanese citizens to
see the Alps from the air.
After the coronation, the sponsor considered
sending Kamikaze home on a ship. Iinuma would
have none of it: His job was to fly.
MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS BOSTON LEONARD A. LAUDER COLLECTION OF JAPANESE POSTCARDS
Kamikaze flew for Asahi until 1939, when

another crew was forced to ditch in the ocean off
Taiwan. Following a laborious retrieval, the air-
plane was put on display near Osaka until 1947,
when the U.S. Army destroyed it.
After Asahi Shimbun’s triumph, competitor Mainichi

Shimbun began planning its response. If Asahi could translated by Marici Reid, that gives us a firsthand
fly a single-engine airplane to England and back, account of the journey.
Mainichi would fly a twin-engine airplane around Nippon took off from Sapporo on August 27,
the world. But Mainichi ’s flight was not ready to 1939, bound for Nome, Alaska. The flight nearly
go until 1939, and the world was different. War ended in disaster on the first day. The crew had
was imminent in both hemispheres. Mainichi recast left behind two-thirds of their oxygen supply to
the flight as a goodwill tour, promoting Japan as save weight, and after the weather forced them
a peaceful nation. to 20,000 feet, Ohara looked into the cockpit to
The airplane Mainichi selected was another notice that both pilots were slumped in their seats,
Mitsubishi, a version of the G3M2 medium unconscious, while the autopilot kept the airplane
bomber, later known to the Allies as the “Nell.” on course. “I could only see the seat backs. There

Only two Tachikawa
were no human forms to be seen. This was not and reporters, who never noticed the glazed eyes
Ki-77s were built. good!” By sharing a lone portable oxygen flask, the and nodding heads of the men who had just flown
One disappeared pilots were revived enough to descend to a survivable many hours in the noisy, unpressurized airplane.
over the Indian altitude. With splitting headaches, they eventually From Nome they flew without incident to
Ocean with Kenji arrived over the rock-strewn strip at Nome. “The Fairbanks and Whitehorse, then on to Seattle,
Tsukagoshi aboard.
The other set a
seven of us were exhausted,” Ohara wrote. “Our where they toured Boeing’s factory. As they made
record for nonstop heads ached. We were sleepy. We were hungry. The their approach to Oakland, the crew got a look at
flight, and post-war wind was blowing and we were cold. But there was the new bridges and buildings in and along San
was transported the joy of walking on solid ground again.” Francisco Bay. “We were struck dumb,” records
aboard the USS At Nome they got their first taste of what would Ohara. “The material strength of America!” After
Bogue to the United
States for evaluation.
trouble them the rest of the trip: speeches, ban- Oakland, Burbank, Albuquerque, and Chicago, they
It was later quets, and receptions. Over and over, they were arrived in New York on September 9. They spent
scrapped. kept up late by mayors, welcoming committees, an exhausting week there—“we became a plaything
of photographers and movie camera men”—before
flying to Washington, D.C., and on to Miami.
Most round-the-world flights would have
continued to the east coast of South America,
but Mainichii wanted to show the flag in Peru and
Chile, with their sizable Japanese expatriate com-
munities. Nipponn headed west over the Caribbean,
then Nakao demonstrated his skill by landing on a
2,200-foot airstrip amid cliffs near San Salvador.
“Here we felt as if we had finally set down a heavy
load...this was the first day since we started that
we had been able to relax together,” wrote Ohara.
It didn’t last. More welcome parties, more late
nights. They arrived, fatigued, in Santiago, Chile
on September 25.
The next leg took them across the Andes, which
even today is not a trivial flight. For seven men
crowded into a heavily laden airplane, flying in bad
weather, it was exceptionally risky. After a long, tur-

A postcard (with a
stamp dated June 1,
1937) shows
Kamikaze in flight
over Japan. This
postcard was
distributed by Asahi
Shimbun, paired
with another
showing the two
pilots. Both cards
were available for
the equivalent of
15 cents.
OPPOSITE TOP: COURTESY COLLECTION OF IVAN GEORGE VAN METER VIA NAVSOURCE; OPPOSITE BOTTOM: COURTESY AMERICAN AVIATION HISTORICAL SOCIETY; IINUMA MUSEUM
bulent beating in extreme altitudes and subfreezing war—but even during wartime, Asahi retained
temperatures, they were finally able to slip through enough influence and money to continue devel-
the clouds into Buenos Aires. Three days later, they oping airplanes and pursuing records. On July 7,
were in Natal, Brazil, preparing for the Atlantic cross- 1943 a Ki-77 loaded with fuel, a crew of five
ing to Dakar, Senegal. They had been impressed by (including Kenji Tsukagoshi), and three military
the natural endowments of South America (“they passengers staggered off the runway in Singapore,
are sleeping upon such rich resources!”) but were attempting a nonstop record flight to (depending
not enamored of the bureaucracy (“the work of these on the source) either Berlin or a German airfield
governments is to make mountains of obstacles”) in Crimea. The airplane was never seen again.
and even less happy with the weather (“we were Within a year, the men who flew these extraor-
above—or in—cloud the whole time”). dinary missions were sucked into the meat grinder
After 12 hours and 45 minutes over the Atlantic, of World War II. We know the fates of only a few.
they reached Dakar. From then on, they flew into In 1941 Kamikaze’s pilot Masaaki Iinuma was
increasingly familiar surroundings. They dodged the in the army, ferrying a Mitsubishi Ki-46 Dinah to
political minefields of the war just begun in Europe, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The wartime Japanese press
crossed the deserts of the Middle East, and almost published a report of his glorious death, fighting
died in Karachi during a blind takeoff in fog, when aloft against overwhelming odds, but the truth was
they missed hitting a Zeppelin mast by mere feet. much sadder. Reportedly depressed and distracted
They finally touched down in Tokyo on October by news of the Japanese attacks on Hawaii and the
A Japanese-
20, having circumnavigated the world in 194 flying Philippines, Iinuma walked into a spinning pro-
American Boy Scout hours. Total maintenance required: a few spark peller and died instantly. He left behind a wife and
troop pushes plugs and oil changes. The flight was a remark- daughter, and today his relatives maintain a small
Nippon back for able demonstration of professional airmanship, museum near Nagano, dedicated to his memory.
departure at mechanical excellence, and superior organization. Nippon pilot Sumitoshi Nakao survived the war
Burbank, California.
Two years later
In response to Mainichi’s success, Asahi commis- and in the post-war years flew for the Americans,
similar airplanes, sioned the Tachikawa firm to build a twin-engine delivering agents into Russia and China in a B-17.
known to the Allies airplane specifically tailored to capture distance His copilot, Shigeo Yoshida, died in 1943, shot
as “Nell” bombers, records. The result was the lovely, long-winged down flying a bomber over Indonesia.
attacked Wake Ki-77. Two were built, and a first flight was In November 1975, a Boeing 747SP finally made
Island and helped
sink the British ships
made in 1942. By that time, the original plan for the first nonstop flight from Tokyo to New York.
Repulse and Prince a nonstop flight from Tokyo to New York was On board was Hidemasa Kimura, designer of the
of Wales. impossible—Japan and the United States were at long-range Ki-77.

VOICES of
OSHKOSH

Everybody Knows Your Name
LES BRYAN HAS BEEN GOING TO OSHKOSH SINCE 1978.
A FORMER DIGITAL IMAGING TECHNICIAN AT INDIANA’S
EVANSVILLE COURIER & PRESS, HE FLIES A 1948
CESSNA 140 FROM SKYLANE AIRPORT NEAR EVANSVILLE.
Before the Voyager flew around the world, [Dick

Rutan and Jeanna Yeager] brought it to Oshkosh.
When it flew over, it looked like a big “H” in the
sky. When they landed, they were treated like
rock stars. And their message was: “This is EAA,
home to the homebuilders. This is a homebuilt
and we’re gonna fly this airplane all around the
world, nonstop, unrefueled.” It made me imagine
E V E R Y Y E A R B E T W E E N 1 9 5 3 A N D 2 0 1 9, the what Charles Lindbergh was like when he was
promoting aviation after his flight.
Experimental Aircraft Association held a convention I’ve flown to Oshkosh so many times I don’t need
of aviation enthusiasts, which, as readers of this mag- a map. There’s a pool of air traffic controllers from
azine know, has grown into the largest, most famous the Great Lakes region—and from other parts of
celebration of private aviation in the world. In that the country—and the pool has seasoned control-
time, the EAA has hosted some of history’s most lers, some with medium [experience], and some
rookies. Some of the controllers at Oshkosh have
significant aircraft—and some of its most outlandish. worked the Evansville tower. They love working
Burt Rutan’s world-circling Voyager and his revolu- Oshkosh. To them, it’s fun: “How many things can
tionary VariEze, the Boeing 747 on its 50th birthday, you throw at me, and I can still make it work?”
the last flying Lockheed Vega—all have basked in the I’m coming in to land one time and normally
they just give you color and type: “High-wing,
adulation of audiences who know a great airplane
red-and-white Cessna, rock your wings, follow
when they see one. the guy in front of you, come on down.” As I’m
For 60 years, airplane lovers the world over have doing that, I get a call: “Okay, Les. You’re cleared to
made a pilgrimage in late July to Oshkosh, Wisconsin land,” and I’m like “Oh, my God. I’ve been coming
(and before 1970, to Rockford, Illinois) to what the EAA to Oshkosh way too long if the controllers can call
me by my first name.” It was one of the controllers
calls AirVenture but most of us know as “Oshkosh.” But from Evansville. I’m really sad that I’m going to
not this year. Oshkosh 2020 fell victim to a pandemic miss my friends this year.
that has kept many of us from our most cherished ritu-
als, and half a million people will feel its loss. Although
nothing can replace Oshkosh, we hope the voices of a
few of its most loyal fans—and photographs of some
of its finest moments—will provide comfort food for
thought, helping those with memories of the fly-in to
recall their own best times and inspiring those who
OPPOSITE: JIM KOEPNICK/EAA; RIGHT: JEFFREY ISOM/EAA
have never been to dream of going next year. We hope

we can all soon start saying again that most frequent
of pilot farewells: “See you at Oshkosh.”
—THE EDITORS
One of the more audacious Oshkosh stars, the Aero Spacelines

Super Guppy dominated the static-display plaza in 2000. Walking
by the modified Boeing Stratocruiser: a crowd that has seen it all.
Voyager ’s 1987 visit to Oshkosh (shown) was its second: It also

showed up in 1984, before it became the globe-circling sensation
that is now in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
August 2020
People People
SINCE 2017, BONNIE AND CRAIG FITZSIMMONS HAVE BEEN WINTERING IN FLORIDA AND SPENDING APRIL THROUGH In a 2019 U.S. Air
MID-SEPTEMBER IN THEIR TRAILER IN AUDREY’S PARK, A RESIDENTIAL CAMPGROUND ON THE AIRVENTURE Force Heritage
flight, an F-22
GROUNDS. CRAIG IS THE CHAIRMAN OF THE 40-PLUS VOLUNTEERS WHO STAFF THE AIRVENTURE COMMUNICATIONS
Raptor trails three
CENTER, AND BONNIE VOLUNTEERS IN THE EAA WAREHOUSE AND FOR THE PRINT-AND-MAIL OPERATION. Mustangs cruising
by “the world’s
Bonnie: In the evening after everyone is done We didn’t start out as airplane enthusiasts. busiest control
volunteering, they usually meet on our deck People come here because they like to be tower” (actually
third U.S. busiest,
and we have a grand old time. I love meeting around airplanes or they like to be around during show week).
all the people. When we gather at night, people or both. We are the both.
Craig always says to me “Who’d you meet We get to fly in a lot of the airplanes. I remember Top: A formation of
today?” once hearing my name being yelled. ‘Hey Craig! four designs marked
Craig: If it weren’t for the people, I don’t think we’d Hey Craig!’ and I turn around, and it’s my wife 2019 as the Year of
invest so much time in it. The communications flying by in the Breezy [a no-cockpit homebuilt Burt Rutan, the
aeronautical genius
group puts up all the speakers for the P.A. system. made for joy rides] with the guy who invented
who helped make
We take care of all 700 two-way radios they use it, Carl Unger. Oshkosh as much as
on the grounds. We monitor the equipment in Best ever! I saw Oshkosh from a different it helped make him.
the airboss trailer where the airshow is directed. view! It was a blast! From bottom:
I also help the grounds maintenance guys. I guess My EAA number is 266,725. One of the guys in VariViggen, VariEze,
Long-EZ, and
I’m known for driving a tractor. our group—his number’s 156. Catbird.
He puts up all 1,500 of the picnic tables for And he’s out there working as hard as the
the campgrounds. rest of them. Peaceful morning in
It takes us about two weeks to set out 1,500 pic- He’s 84 years old. the vintage aircraft
nic tables. One year we put in a weather warning And you’d never know it. campground.
CHRIS MILLER/EAA
system. That was a lot of antennas and speakers. You’d never know it. Oshkosh veterans
say camping on the
That took us all summer to do. If you have a group For us, what stands out is the friendships grounds is the best
of volunteers, you’ve got to have something for we’ve made. It’s more of a gathering of great way to savor the
those folks to do, or they won’t come back. friends. full experience.

I Built This Myself
FRED KEIP WENT TO HIS FIRST OSHKOSH IN 1974, GOT
HIS LICENSE IN 1975, BOUGHT THE PLANS FOR HIS
HOMEBUILT IN 1976, AND IN 1986, FLEW IT TO OSHKOSH.
Going to Oshkosh was the fuel on the fire. John

Monett’s Sonerai [a small two-seater with a
Volkswagen engine] was growing in popularity,
and there were really a lot of them there. Every
year I’d go to Oshkosh to get fired up again. You
work on it all year, off and on, but you go there
and see all these finished airplanes—it gets you
going for a few months more.
That’s kind of an EAA’ers ultimate goal—to
take your airplane to Oshkosh. Every year, I’d go
up there and talk to Sonerai builders. You might
be at some particular phase in the build, and you
take pictures and talk to people and say “Oh, that’s
how that guy did it.” I’ve got hundreds of photo-
graphs that I took while there—I probably spent as
much on film as I did on airplane parts—and then
when I was building my airplane, I’d get stuck on
something, I’d go to the picture box. Once I had
the airplane done, I felt obligated to take mine up
there every year and do a little payback.
Back in April, I was joking around with my
friends and said, “If they cancel Oshkosh this year,
I’m going to fly up there, land, taxi over onto the
big square, get out of my airplane, take a bunch a
pictures, and go back home and jump on Facebook
and say, ‘Hey, where was everybody?’ ”
TOP: CONNOR MADISON/EAA; BOTTOM: CAROLINE SHEEN

Next Gen
CONNOR MADISON DOESN’T HAVE MUCH OF A MEMORY
OF HIS FIRST OSHKOSH: HE WAS FOUR MONTHS OLD.
TODAY, HE’S THE EAA STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER.
My favorite’s the Mustang, but the odd ones are U.S. Navy Lieutenant
definitely what stick out, and that’s the cool thing Tyler Shaver briefs a
about AirVenture is that it attracts all these one- trio of civilians about
the F-35C that flew
off, crazy airplanes like the Fairey Gannet. It’s a in from California’s
carrier aircraft developed [in World War II] for Naval Air Station
anti-submarine action. The wings fold up in sort of Lemoore last July.
a Z pattern. There was a raceplane, Miss Ashley II, Frontline fighters
of all services fly
and it had two sets of contra-rotating propellers.
demos each year at
That was just burned in my memory. In 1998, when Oshkosh, to the
the Concorde came, [EAA had announced that it delight of dads and
was coming] so we knew we were going to get to sons—and moms
see it. I just called it the SST. I was five years old. and daughters (not
pictured).
When we would come over for the day, we would
park at one of the schools in Oshkosh and take a
bus to the field. I was driving with my mom and Possibly the most
elegant airliner ever
dad—we were within the city at that point—and to grace the runway
I remember looking out of the car window, and at Oshkosh’s
there was the Concorde just above the tree tops, Wittman Regional
and I was like “Holy cow! There it is!” Airport, the
A large part of why I’m a photographer is Aérospatiale/BAC
Concorde came and
AirVenture. I really love taking pictures in conquered in 1985.
Fightertown in the Warbird area. At sunset, you’ve People are still
got all these cool airplanes. I feel at peace there. talking about it.
TOP: LAURIE GOOSSENS/EAA; BOTTOM: CARL SCHUPPEL/EAA

THE FIRST TIME WE WENT, WE CAMPED IN TENTS RIGHT
NEXT TO THE THEATER IN THE WOODS, AND WE’D GO TO
SLEEP LISTENING TO SOMEBODY TALK AIRPLANES.
—LES BRYAN
The School of Airplanes

IN 2012, DALE PHILLIPS WON AN AWARD FOR BEST CHEROKEE FOR HIS 1968 PIPER CHEROKEE 180D. HE GOT SOME
POINTERS FROM THE JUDGES AND FROM FRIENDS, AND WENT BACK THE FOLLOWING YEAR, WHEN HIS CHEROKEE
TOOK THE BRONZE LINDY IN THE VINTAGE CATEGORY. THIS YEAR’S AIRVENTURE WOULD HAVE BEEN HIS TENTH.
My next goal is to get the second airplane I or worn out. You learn the network and where to Had the show been
bought—a Beechcraft Bonanza—going through go. There is nothing that you can’t find out. If you able to go on, the
the rigors of the show. I take it very seriously, and want to go to learn, you can literally spend your starring military
demonstration team
I learn so much from the community there about entire time in forums. My airplane has a Lycoming in 2020 would have
the airplanes and about the process of getting one engine; a Lycoming factory representative is there been the Canadian
in the upper echelon worthy of an award. The to put on seminars, so I’ve always attended those. Forces Snowbirds.
©2017 DND-MDNCANADA/SGT HALINA FOLFAS
vast majority of folks, for example, don’t attend Anything you can imagine, you can find a course Flying Canadair
to an airplane’s landing gear. They let it get dirty. for. There’s a common bond of wanting to preserve CT-114 Tutor jets
in nine-ship
You’ve got to crawl up under the airplane to get general aviation for the next generation. formations, the
to it, but the people who are winning are the It’s really gonna leave a hole this year not being Snowbirds were
people who are lying on their backs under their able to go. The guy I bought my airplane from— booked in four U.S.
airplanes, polishing everything, all the way down we’ve become best friends and we’ve already texted cities this year; all
to the rubber on the tires. and said “we’ve got to get together this summer, shows were
canceled.
You find all kinds of hardware vendors at Oshkosh or no Oshkosh”—so I’ll probably be
Oshkosh that sell the nuts and screws and hard- going to Rockford, Illinois to visit him. We’ll do
ware that’s necessary to replace parts that are old some flying.

Family Tradition
JIM BUXTON WAS BORN IN 1972, AND HIS PARENTS TOOK HIM TO OSHKOSH IN 1973. “I’VE ONLY MISSED THREE YEARS With the wingspan
SINCE I’VE BEEN ALIVE,” HE SAYS. “NOBODY IN MY FAMILY MISSED ONE UNTIL 2005, WHEN MY DAD’S HEALTH STARTED of a 747 and a
72,000-gallon cargo
TO GO SOUTH.” BUXTON’S FAMILY RETURNED TO CAMP SCHOLLER IN 2008 AND HAVEN’T MISSED A YEAR SINCE.
hold, the Martin
Mars water bomber
There was a group of us that gradually got bigger. the treetops. I was there with my wife and kids, is the largest flying
It became another family. I’m always reminded of and I just started screaming and laughing like a boat ever operated.
what [EAA founder] Paul Poberezny said: “The school kid—all of us did. It was just so unbelievable Canada’s Coulson
Flying Tankers
airplanes will bring you there, but the people are to see it, and you could hear it long before it came brought this
what bring you back.” into view. It was actually rumbling the ground. I last-of-a-kind to
One of our family’s traditions—and the 20 or 30 still get goosebumps thinking about it. Oshkosh in 2016.
people we camp with—is to go on evening walks.
You’d have flashlights to come home, and they’d
LEFT: RICHARD VANDERMEULEN; BOTTOM: CONNOR MADISON/EAA

have lights on some of the airplanes parked in
what we used to call Aeroshell Square. One year,
they had the Concorde and the B-1 bomber parked
nose to nose. They have kind of similar profiles
but completely different purposes in life. And
one of the guys we camp with—who was a B-24
navigator in World War II—said, “You know, you
just kind of wonder what they talk about at night.”
I’ll never forget the Martin Mars. It was out
over Lake Winnebago, and we could see it from
camp, about five miles away. You could see it
plain as day—that’s just how big it was. We’re big
seaplane fans, so we went over to the seaplane
base. It did a low pass over the lagoon just over

To honor World
War II Mustang
triple ace Bud
Anderson, a
frequent speaker at
warbird forums, a
row of P-51 pilots
performed a Merlin
engine chorus.
“Hooray for
airplanes!” the
fireworks finale at
each evening of the THE WORST DAY IN OSHKOSH IS STILL
STEVE DAHLGREN/EAA
AirVenture airshow BETTER THAN A GREAT DAY JUST ABOUT

seems to say. “All
are welcome,” from ANYWHERE ELSE.
the biggest Air Force —JIM BUXTON
transport to the
humblest Piper Cub.
A Veteran’s Best Day

FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS, AMY CROZIER HAS LIVED NEAR APPLETON—A HALF HOUR FROM OSHKOSH—BUT UNTIL A
CO-WORKER GAVE HER TICKETS IN 2013, SHE HAD NEVER BEEN TO THE SHOW. SHE’S BEEN A VOLUNTEER EVER SINCE.
My first experience was in 2013, and I brought my erans and invite them to join the parade. Every
dad. He was kind of hesitant about going. My dad year, I had a different veteran. In 2016, a World
was in the Navy, and on every Friday [of show War II veteran who had been a crew chief in
week], they celebrate veterans. We got there at the South Pacific—Bob Jacoby—helped rebuild a
11 in the morning and we ended up staying until Ryan ST trainer that sat in front of the Red Barn
7 that night. They treated him like royalty. He all week. It was a beautiful airplane. Every time
got to be in the veterans’ parade. He met so many I went there, he was standing next to it—even in
veterans—one who was stationed near Virginia the hot sun. He was just so proud. It was his first
Beach where he was—and they swapped stories, time at Oshkosh. That Friday, it was an experi-
something he had never been able to do. And we ence just like my dad’s. Before we were waiting
got to see the Old Glory honor flight bringing for the parade, he saw an airplane he used to be a
Vietnam veterans in, and Tony Orlando was crew chief on. One of the guys had a compartment
there singing. It was so exciting for my dad that open—working on something—and handed Bob
on the way home, he said, “Amy, this is one of a wrench. He had the biggest smile on his face. I
the best days of my life.” He talked about it for went to help with other veterans, and when I came
months and talked about going next year. But he back, there was a crowd of people listening to his
had a stroke on December 20 and passed away. stories, laughing and applauding. After the parade,
It was very unexpected. At the funeral, people when we got back to the Ryan, he pointed to me
kept saying “You’re the one who took your dad to and told his friends “There’s a place in heaven
AirVenture” because he had told everybody about waiting for this angel here.” That’s what makes
it. I decided I needed to give back so I went on the me want to go back to volunteer. I don’t have an
website to volunteer, and they hooked me up with aviation background, but I’ve met so many won-
the Vintage group in the Hospitality Red Barn. derful people and gotten rides in airplanes and
While I worked at the Red Barn, I’d meet vet- I’ve learned so much.

I WAS T H E R E
A Long, Strange Trip

CAUGHT BY COVID AWAY FROM HOME, THE AUTHOR FINDS HIS WAY
THROUGH THREE AIRPORTS AND ACROSS AN OCEAN.
by John Fleischman
KIDS LOVE A PUBLIC DISRUPTION and, as 14 hours of flying back to Ohio in a pressurized
a child, I was always a great fan of school-canceling On March 28, in aluminum tube alongside strangers was the wisest
snowstorms and municipal strikes. As a grumpy, the year of the course. But surgically masked and sanitizer-loaded,
pandemic, three
self-important adult, I grew to expect that I could lone travelers
we headed for the airport, steeling ourselves as
fly the Atlantic anytime I had the time, money, and roll their luggage if we had to cross a sagging bridge over a chasm
a reservation—until this virus-haunted spring when across the because that was the only way home.
I found myself grounded in Lombardy, the Italian cavernous intercity On arrival, we discovered that passenger oper-
epicenter of the Covid-19 epidemic. It was brutal train platform at ations had been temporarily moved two miles
Charles de Gaulle
there—so many sick, so many dead, all heralded by International Airport
away, to the much smaller Terminal 2, normally
the wail of ambulance sirens day and night. in Paris, the second the domain of the budget airlines. The last time I
We’d planned to fly home in early April. Then stop on the author’s was there, Terminal 2 was positively heaving with
in mid-March, America discovered Covid and Milan-Paris-Atlanta- travelers and roller bags. Today the board showed
Cincinnati odyssey.
Delta Air Lines cut its transatlantic schedule to one 17 flights for the entire day. Fortunately our Air
flight a day from five cities (none in Italy), all to be France flight to Charles de Gaulle was still listed.
operated by its European code-share partners. We We had our passports out to prove our foreign-
were stuck. But after four canceled rebookings and ers-going-home status to airport security. Then
14 weeks of safe, well-fed, and Netflix-supported we went through a thermal-scanning gateway to a
NICOLAS
lockdown, my wife and I set out on June 1 for socially distanced holding pen, and then across the
the Milan airport at Malpensa. We wondered if echoing check-in hall to assigned spots six feet apart

like chess pieces on a giant board. Here we waited Cincinnati journalist once described the Ohio River
our turn in a church-like hush of lowered voices and in drought, looking “like a small boy in a big hat.”
private contemplation. Why is that man wearing As the pandemic recedes, the question is whether
his mask under his nose? Did I just touch my face? global aviation will swell again to fill the hat or
Eventually we moved through ticketing, a whether suspicion, caution, or hard times will
no-wait security screening, and corridors of require us to get a new size or even a different hat.
steel-shuttered airport boutiques. In the Air France I have lost count of how many times we’ve flown
gate area, seats were taped off and the floor sec- the Atlantic to see grandparents and now to be
tioned so that the 50 or so passengers could wait in grandparents. Along the way, we’ve lost luggage, a
isolation for an Airbus A320, which usually carries few stuffed animals, and occasionally sensation in
220. We were boarded in small groups, from back to our lower extremities. We’ve weathered blizzards,
front, a startling reversal of the airline caste system. a derecho, and the Shoe Bomber. Oddly enough,
Today it was Last Rows first and First Class last. the only other time we’d flown transatlantic via
Anyone who has changed planes at Paris’ Charles Atlanta was during another “natural” catastro-
de Gaulle dreads the infamous passport control hall phe, the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption in
where jet-lagged souls shuffle through webbed cattle Iceland that disrupted air traffic across the northern
pens before coming under the cold eye of a police hemisphere. To avoid the volcanic ash plume, our
agent. Today, there were only two agents behind flight from Milan detoured far out over the North
glass at the far end and the two of us. Other than
barking at my wife to stand two meters back from
her husband, the masked agent had nothing to say
before delivering the official passport whump. THE PANDEMIC HAD FLIPPED THE
After so much worry, the long Atlantic haul was EQUATION OF MODERN GLOBAL
anticlimactic. The 60 or so passengers were sprin- AVIATION, LEAVING GOVERNMENTS,
kled around the four cabins of what looked to be AIRLINES, AND AIRPORTS WITH MASS
a fully crewed Boeing 777. Everyone was masked. CAPACITY AND UNCERTAIN DEMAND.
Everyone was on best social-distancing behavior.
It was a daytime flight but after lunch the window
shades came down and the cabin lights dimmed.
It was like throwing a blanket over a canary cage. Atlantic to swing along Iceland’s ash-free north
The passengers went quiet, even the babies. coast before turning south for Atlanta.
There were screens but I couldn’t watch them. I This June, when we came up an escalator in
had a book but couldn’t read. I was thinking about Atlanta into the Terminal A concourse, we nearly
the rituals of commercial flight, not just the hassle turned and fled in panic. We’d landed in a crowded
of getting to and through the airport but how after new world where viral transmission was apparently
I buckle into my seat, I willingly hand over my life a matter of opinion. Here, shops were open, eateries
to the flight crew. Following 9/11, we’d worried roared, and face masks were optional. Fortunately
about burly men congregating outside the lavatory. for our nerves and immune systems, our last leg
New times, new dangers, I thought, and fell asleep. to Cincinnati was strictly no-mask/no-fly. We
When we landed in Atlanta, all the federal con- boarded back-to-front and spread out in the cabin.
trol agencies were out in force. CDC workers took By the time the Delta flight attendant was show-
our temperatures, recorded our contact info, and ing us how to click our seat belts, I was miles away,
told us to go into home quarantine for 14 days. An reliving my accidental trip to Iceland. I’d been in
agriculture inspector questioned us closely about a rotten mood. In Milan, they wouldn’t check our
seeds. Border Patrol agents almost outnumbered luggage but kept us standing for hours while far-
passengers. The TSA was on full alert, insisting on away supervisors decided what to do. Much, much
shoes off, a double X-ray for our iPads, hands-up later, our pilot told us to look out the left side of
body scans followed by a same-sex frisking. Ohio writer
the aircraft. I vividly remembered the cloudless
The pandemic had flipped the equation of mod- view we had of a miniature Iceland—rocks, rivers,
COURTESY JOHN FLEISCHMAN
John Fleischman
ern global aviation, leaving governments, airlines, reports that he tiny houses, tiny boats—passing below. Goodness,
and mega-airports like ATL with mass capacity and is safe at home I remember thinking, I love flying. The virus and
uncertain demand. Our flight with 60 passengers after 14 days the volcano reminded me that flying can take you
of quarantine,
arrived at an international facility scaled to handle thinking about the
to unexpected places, some pleasant, some not
thousands. We were like a great river shriveled to advantages of open- so. Frequent flyers know it’s no good hoping for
a trickle in its wide bed, or as a mid-19th century cockpit biplanes. nothing but blue skies. Still we take our chances.

R E V I E WS
tially unknown—even within the U.S.

Army. In 2003, the Pentagon created
this 300-soldier brigade from scratch.
Their stories were extraordinary.”
A C H AT W I T H DA N WAS S E R B LY
Does the job of standing missile
watch have to be done by humans?
There is a significant amount of automa-
tion involved, and the mission would be
impossible without it. But the soldiers
are there to act on orders from the head
of Northern Command, who gets orders
from the secretary of defense. The soft-
ware would launch interceptor after
interceptor until there were no more,
but human crews are there to tell the
system what to defend, when to hold
fire, and where to take risks. They’re
also there in case of some fiasco, and
they train nonstop for any scenario:
communications failure, fire in their
control node, Northern Command
goes offline, one missile incoming from
North Korea, 10 missiles incoming from
North Korea, and on and on.
How do the crews working the

midnight shift stay alert?
Author Interview Though they typically don’t enjoy living
like a vampire, every crew member I
The Watchmen spoke with said sitting down at their
console with their crew and conducting
such a weighty mission was invigorating
Twenty-four hours a day—every day— enough. Also coffee and energy drinks.
U.S. Army soldiers are ready to defend
the United States against incoming Do the missile-watch crews tend to
skew young in age?
nuclear missiles. Each five-soldier crew has a range of ages
and ranks. The lowest is a sergeant and
highest is a lieutenant colonel, which
THE BOOK Dan Wasserbly, the editor of Jane’s International creates a unique dynamic. A sergeant is a
Defence Review, interviewed many of the 300 men and women long way down from a lieutenant colonel,
who make up the 100th Missile Defense Brigade, which is and soldiers of those ranks would not
based at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs and normally sit and chat or work together
at Fort Greely in Alaska. Working in teams of five, these for hours and hours. But the mission
missileers pull 12-hour shifts, ready to launch silo-based requires quick and honest input from
interceptors to destroy nuclear warheads in space. every operator, so rank matters, but
so does experience. It’s a very different
W H Y T H E AU T H O R D EC I D E D TO W R I T E I T “I origi- structure from the rest of the Army,
nally planned to write an academic history of the technology closer to the special forces community.
and how it was developed. But in my early research I began
■ DIANE TEDESCHI IS A SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR
meeting the soldiers who operate the technology. They have AT AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN. ■ READ THE FULL
this incredibly difficult and important job, yet were essen- INTERVIEW AT AIRSPACEMAG.COM/WASSERBLY

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R E V I E WS
a most unusual gift of love

The First Strike:
Doolittle Raider
Don Smith
BY PAUL HIGBEE. SOUTH DAKOTA HISTORICAL
SOCIETY PRESS, 2019. 195 PP., $24.95.
The differences between wartime sen-

sibilities on the Allied side versus those
of the Axis powers are easily grasped by
comparing the films of Hitler’s favorite
auteur, Leni Riefenstahl,
and those made by
Hollywood. The author
notes that her Triumph of
the Will has been consid-
Measuring 14” x 16”, this beautiful poem and artwork is available fully-framed for $145 or in ered one of the greatest
the mats alone at $105. Please add $18.95 for insured shipping and packaging. (California propaganda films ever
residents please include 8.0% tax.) Your satisfaction is completely guaranteed. made because of its visual
Sextonart Inc. • P.O. Box 581 • Rutherford, California 94573 • 415.989.1630 power and advanced tech-
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the epic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, in
www.robertsexton.com contrast, narrates the events of the 1942
bombing raid led by Jimmy Doolittle as
a tapestry of uniquely American virtues
depicting the average citizen rising to
accomplish heroic deeds. This book
is an account of the making of one of
Doolittle’s pilots, and it comes straight
from the Great Plains of middle America.
Don Smith piloted aircraft number 15
on the raid, and that made him a national
hero. He was born in South Dakota,
orphaned, adopted by a veterinarian,
and raised in the town of Belle Fourche.
He would have become a farmer, having
studied agricultural sciences in college,
but then came Pearl Harbor.
Preparations for the raid are mapped
against Smith’s Air Corps training fol-
lowed by a fairly complete telling of the
mission itself, and ending with the fate of
the crews after crash-landing, mostly in
China. Savage details of the execution of
three American crew members come as
a jolting reminder of how the Japanese
military conducted the war. Errors are
minor—some aircraft models get mud-
dled—but these things happen. Smith died
later in a B-26 crash, but his memory is
still cherished in South Dakota.
■ GEORGE C. LARSON IS THE AIR & SPACE
FOUNDING EDITOR.

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In the next issue

284 mph in a Biplane
Since the first air race in Reno, in
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teams have been refining techniques
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© DON “BUCKY” DAWSON
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33514183
*
LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20*
ITEM 61437, 90912
61435, 90913, 61436 * 33520209
33520209
*
LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20*
90909 shown

(3597) (4624) (4711) (1394)
130 Piece Tool Kit with Case 6 AMP Variable Speed 18" Working Platform Step Stool Rapid Pump® 1.5 Ton
Reciprocating Saw
$ 99 $ 99 Lightweight Aluminum
Floor Jack
$ 99
Compar o
Save
54%
$
1999
Compare to
Porter-Cable
Save
66%
Blade sold
separately.
Compare to
Neocraft
Save
50%
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Save
$
91
K Tool
Anvil A137HOS
$66.39 Use Online & In-Store PCE360
$59.98
Use Online & In-Store 60635
$39.99
Use Online & In-Store KTI63094 Use Online & In-Store
ITEM 64263/68998
63248/64080 * 33572979*
33572979
ITEM 61884
65570/62370 shown
* 33524885
33524885
* ITEM 62515
66911 shown
* 33525374
33525374
* $151.42
ITEM 64552/64832 * 33527387*
33527387
63091 shown LIMIT 3 - Exp. 9/21/20* LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20* LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20* 64980/64545 shown LIMIT 2 - Exp. 9/21/20*

(589) (2463)
10" Pneumatic Tire
(4660)
20 Gallon, 135 PSI 20 oz. Gravity Feed Heavy Duty Hand Truck
Oil-Lube Air Spray Gun (2031) $ 99
Air Compressor
$ 99 $ 99
$
4 99
Save Save
Save
50%
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$
85 80% Compare to
50% Compare to
Compare to Compare Milwaukee Farm & Ranch
Porter-Cable Husky 70019 FR1055
118903799 Use Online & In-Store H4840GHVSG Use Online & In-Store $59.99 Use Online & In-Store $8.09 Use Online & In-Store
* 33531144* * 33543502* * 33549655*
$249.99
ITEM 56241
64857 shown 33531144
$49.99
ITEM 67181 * 33542157*
33542157
ITEM 62775/3163
62776/62973
95061 shown 33543502
ITEM 69385/62388
62409/62698
30900 shown 33549655
LIMIT 1 - Exp. 9/21/20* 62300/47016 shown LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20* LIMIT 2 - Exp. 9/21/20* LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20*

(1391) (2985)
0.30 cal. Ammo Box (7072) (6653)
9 Piece Fully Polished

Combination Wrench Sets
3500W Super Quiet
Inverter Generator
$ 49 7 AMP Electric
El t ic
Pole Saw 9.5" Barr
$
9 99
YOUR CHOICE
5
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$ 99 66%
. to
5
8 ft
IItem 42304
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65%
$ 99 .1
0"
shown
TYPE ITEM Save Save
$
SAE 69043/63282/42304 1,249
METRIC 69044/63171/42305 Compare to
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$
39
Honda RangeMaxx Worx
Compare to
Husky Use Online & In-Store EU3000iS1A Use Online & In-Store 1312-92 Use Online & In-Store WG309
$99.98
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* 33555878 * * 33550998 * * 33556400 * * 33556713 *
HCW10PCSAE $2,019 $9.99
$17.97 ITEM 56720 ITEM 63135 ITEM 56808
33555878 LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20* 63584 shown 33550998 LIMIT 1 - Exp. 9/21/20* 61451 shown 33556400 LIMIT 4 - Exp. 9/21/20* 63190/62896 shown 33556713 LIMIT 2 - Exp. 9/21/20*
1,000+ Stores Nationwide • HarborFreight.com At Harbor Freight Tools, the “Compare to” price means that the specifiedfi comparison, which is an item with the same or similar function, was
advertised for sale at or above the “Compare to” price by another national retailer in the U.S. within the past 90 days. Prices advertised by others
*Original coupon only. No use on prior purchases after 30 days from original purchase or without original receipt. Valid through 9/21/20. may vary by location. No other meaning of “Comp pare to” should be implied. For more information, go to HarborFreight.com or see store associate.
ONE MORE THING
FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE SMITHSONIAN’S NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM
Verville-Sperry M-1 Messenger

COMPACT AND AGILE, IT WAS DESIGNED TO REPLACE MOTORBIKES ON THE BATTLEFRONT.
A 97-MPH S I N G L E - S E AT E Rwith a a two-seat “Sport” variant, touting its ability to be

100-foot wingspan, the Messenger is the smallest The Museum’s M-1 kept in a garage, no hangar required. What the
crewed aircraft the Army ever used. Its compact was a two-seat Army designated the M-1 became a platform for
Sperry Sport Plane
frame was key to its versatility. Alfred V. Verville’s when donated, but
experimentation: Pilots tried out versions with
1920 design responded to a U.S. Army Air Service the Smithsonian skis for use on snow, and modified M-1s served as
request for an aircraft to replace the motorcycles converted it to the radio-controlled bombs. A Messenger was also the
shuttling officers from one warfront station to M-1 configuration first aircraft to dock with an airship, in 1924—one
DANE PENLAND/NASM
another. Lawrence Sperry, whose company the that was used to year after Sperry drowned in the English Channel
dock with an airship,
Army hired to build Verville’s design, grabbed after his M-1 crashed during an attempted crossing.
installing a skyhook
attention by landing his personal Messenger on and painting it in
the U.S. Capitol steps to protest the slow payment the livery of Sperry ■ CHRIS KLIMEK IS AN AIR & SPACE/SMITHSONIAN ASSOCIATE
of his invoices. By 1921 he was already marketing Aircraft No. 22. EDITOR.

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