Cape May: Aviation Museum

Randy was in a ‘limited participation’ mindset on visiting museums but it was still raining. So, we chose a museum of interest to him, an Aviation Museum in Hanger 1 at the former Naval Air Station Wildwood.

The Naval Air Station operated from 1943-45 to train navy pilots in dive bombing techniques. In October 1944, there were 17,000 take offs and landings, one every 40 seconds. Trainees flew at night, simulating their future duties in the Pacific. Practice targets were constructed in Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

In 36 months, there were 129 crashes resulting in 42 deaths.

During WWII, there were 22 all wooden double wide hangars built to support training navy fighter pilots. Each hangar had over 4400 windows and covered 92,000 square feet. Hangar 1 is the only one of its kind left.

After the war, dentist and Navy pilot Dr. Ralph Cox operated a low fare airline called United States Overseas Airlines out of Hanger 1. With 18 planes, Overseas Airlines was a safe and reliable carrier. It made flights within the country, to Hawaii, and to other places around the world. The airline ceased operations in 1964.

Hangar 1 deteriorated over the following years. Dr. Joseph Salvatore purchased it for $1 from the county with the intention to establish a group to restore the hangar and open it as an aviation museum. The museum opened in 1997.

The museum has aircraft, of course, but also a variety of other exhibits. Having read a number of novels about British efforts to break the German Enigma codes at Bletchley Hall, it was interesting to see an Enigma Machine.

This plane, silhouetted against the many windows in Hangar 1, is a Northrop F-5E Tiger II. This plane was, reportedly, the ‘aggressor’ in the original Top Gun movie.

Randy’s checking out the TBM Avenger. It was a torpedo bomber.

Not an aircraft, but a 41 foot Coast Guard vessel. It was used for search and rescue as well as law enforcement.

This was the exhibit that was most interesting to me – All Available Boats.

It had a number of information boards about the various boats, retired boats, captains, agencies and volunteers that responded to the 9/11 attacks in NYC. There were a myriad of coordinated, and uncoordinated, efforts to get people away from the island of Manhattan.

This 1969 Sikorsky helicopter was deployed on the US Coast Guard Ice Breaker, Polar Star, in waters off Alaska.

The Polar Star and sister ship Polar Sea are the oldest icebreakers in the coast guard fleet. A third, USCGC Healy, was commissioned in 1999.

Another section of the museum focused on the contributions of women in service to the country.

That included a display about the WASPs – The Women Airforce Service Pilots. The WASP were 1102 female civilian pilots who flew missions (bomber, cargo, drone, training and transport) accounting for over 60,000,000 miles during World War II under the command of the US Air Force. We first learned about the WASPS at a museum in 2016 and have appreciated seeing reference to them since.

We also saw a display about the WAVES – Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service into the Navy. There were 8000 female officers supervising 80,000 female enlisted personnel performing a variety of tasks for the Navy. By the end of the war, they accounted for 2.5 percent of Navy personnel.

This is a Lockheed TWV Seastar that operated from 1953 – 1970. There were a dozen or so planes presented with only statistics. An airplane must have a “story” to be of much interest to me – like the plane below.

This F6F-3 was put into service in 1943 with a squadron from California. After returning in 1945, it was ditched at sea by its pilot twelve miles off San Diego. Twenty-six years later, it was retrieved from 1800 ft. below the surface. The plane was in excellent condition. Unfortunately. it did not receive additional care and it deteriorated. The plane was later acquired by the museum and restored. It is the only surviving Hellcat of over 4000 that were built.