Warplanes of the USA: Maine, Owls Head Transportation Museum

Owls Head Transportation Museum Knox County Airport, Route 73, PO Box 277, Owls Head, ME 04854. Phone: (207) 594-4418, (207) 594-4418, Fax: (207) 594-4410.

The Owls Head Transportation Museum has one of the finest collections of pioneer-era aircraft and automobiles in the world. More than 100 historic aircraft, automobiles, bicycles, carriages and engines are on permanent display. The Aircraft Collection contains replicas and originals representing the first century of flight, from Cayley’s unmanned glider (1804) to the legendary Curtiss Jenny of the barnstorming era. An outstanding collection of automobiles spans the late 19th Century and early 20th century, and includes the 1963 Prototype Mustang and a 1935 Stout Scarab (called the world’s first mini-van, one of only six ever made).

Antoinette monoplane replica, 1909.

Bellanca replica (Serial No. 2), Reg. No. N1911G.

(RAF Photo)

Blériot XI with RFC markings during the First World War.

(Author Photos)

Blériot XI replica, 1903.

The Blériot XI was a French aircraft from the pioneer era of aviation. The first example was used by Louis Blériot to make the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft, on 25 July 1909. This is one of the most famous accomplishments of the pioneer era of aviation, and not only won Blériot a lasting place in history but also assured the future of his aircraft manufacturing business. The event caused a major reappraisal of the importance of aviation; the English newspaper The Daily Express led its story of the flight with the headline "Britain is no longer an Island."[1]The aircraft was produced in both single- and two-seat versions, powered by several different engines, and was widely used for competition and training purposes. Military versions were bought by many countries, continuing in service until after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Two restored examples – one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States – of original Blériot XI aircraft are thought to be the two oldest flyable aircraft in the world. (Wikipedia)

(Author Photos)

Boeing-Stearman A75N1/PT-17 Kaydet Biplane (Serial No. 75-1795), Reg. No. N55361.

The Stearman (Boeing) Model 75 is an American biplane formerly used as a military trainer aircraft, of which at least 10,626 were built in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Stearman Aircraft became a subsidiary of Boeing in 1934. Widely known as the Stearman, Boeing Stearman, or Kaydet, it served as a primary trainer for the United States Army Air Forces, the United States Navy (as the NS and N2S), and with the Royal Canadian Air Force as the Kaydet throughout the Second World War. After the conflict was over, thousands of surplus aircraft were sold on the civilian market. In the immediate postwar years, they became popular as crop dusters and sports planes, and for aerobatic and wing walking use in air shows. (Wikipedia)

(Author Photos)

Boeing B75N1, 1942, VN2S-3 (Serial No. 75-6746), Reg. No. N75980.

Burgess-Wright F replica.

(Author Photo)

Bücker Bü 131 Jungmann.

The Bücker Bü 131 Jungmann (freshman, young man)[note 1] is a basic biplane trainer aircraft designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Bücker Flugzeugbau. It was the company's first aircraft, as well as being the final biplane to be produced in Germany. On 27 April 1934, the first prototype Bü 131 performed its maiden flight, which was roughly two years after the company had been founded in Berlin-Johannisthal by Carl Bücker. Anders J. Andersson had led the aircraft's design effort. Comprising both metal and wooden construction, the Bü 131 was designed to be suitable in the trainer role, and even to perform aerobatic manoeuvres. The first deliveries of the Bü 131 occurred in 1934, the Deutscher Luftsportverband (DLV) being a key early customer for the type. Later on, the Bü 131B was selected as the primary basic trainer for the German Luftwaffe. In this capacity, it was operated in large numbers throughout the Second World War. Throughout the 1930s, there had been substantial demand for the Bü 131, multiple large export orders and production licenses were issued as a result. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the largest pre-war export customer for the type, flying as many as 400 Bü 131s at one point. Hundreds were produced locally by the Spanish aircraft company Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA). In excess of 1,300 Bü 131s were operated by the military air services of Imperial Japan under local designations of Kokusai Ki-86 and Kyushu K9W. The Bü 131 remained operation with numerous air forces for decades after the conflict, some choosing to retain the type through to the late 1960s. It has proved to be a relatively popular biplane with private pilots, who have often elected to have their aircraft refitted with modern engines for increased performance. (Wikipedia)

Cayley Glider replica.

(Author Photo)

Cessna CG-2 Glider.

(Author Photo)

Chanute biplane Glider, 1896, ½-scale model.

(Author Photo)

Clark Biwing Ornithopter, original, ca 1900.

James W. Clark, clock maker, bicycle repairman and inventor, of Bridgewater, Pennsylvania, supposedly tested this machine between 1900 and 1910. It failed to fly, was wrecked, then rebuilt and fitted with the present engine about 1907.

(Author Photos)

Curtiss JN-4D Jenny (Serial No. 34094), Reg. No. N94JN.

The Curtiss JN "Jenny" is a series of biplanes built by the Glenn Curtiss Aeroplane Company of Hammondsport, New York, later the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. Although the Curtiss JN series was originally produced as a training aircraft for the US Army, the "Jenny" (the common nickname derived from "JN") continued after the First World War as a civilian aircraft, becoming the "backbone of American postwar [civil] aviation". Thousands of surplus Jennys were sold at bargain prices to private owners in the years after the war, and became central to the barnstorming era that helped awaken the US to civil aviation through much of the 1920s. (Wikipedia)

(Author Photo)

Curtiss Model D pusher replica, 1912, (Serial No. M-4), Reg. No. N1GJ.

The 1911 Curtiss Model D (or frequently "Curtiss Pusher") is an early United States pusher aircraft with the engine and propeller behind the pilot's seat. It was among the first aircraft in the world to be built in any quantity, during an era of trial-and-error development and equally important parallel technical development in internal combustion engine technologies.It was also the aircraft type which made the first takeoff from the deck of a ship (flown by Eugene B. Ely off the deck of USS Birmingham on November 14, 1910, near Hampton Roads, Virginia) and made the first landing aboard a ship (USS Pennsylvania) on 18 January 1911, near San Francisco, California.It was originally fitted with a foreplane for pitch control, but this was dispensed with when it was accidentally discovered to be unnecessary. The new version without the foreplane was known as the Headless Pusher.Like all Curtiss designs, the aircraft used ailerons, which first existed on a Curtiss-designed airframe as quadruple "wing-tip" ailerons on the 1908 June Bug to control rolling in flight, thus avoiding use of the Wright brothers' patented wing warping technology. (Wikipedia)

(Author Photos)

Curtiss-Wright Travel Air D-4000 Speedwing.

The Travel Air 4000 is an American general-purpose biplane of the 1920s, a member of the family of aircraft that began with the Travel Air Model A. It was later known as the Model 4. Derived from the Model BW, around 100 were built, including two that were converted from Model 2000s. (Wikipedia)

(Author Photos)

Deperdussin Gordon Bennett Racer replica, 1913, (Serial No. 01), Reg. No. N78TJ.

The Deperdussin Monocoque was an early racing aircraft built in 1912 by the Aéroplanes Deperdussin, a French aircraft manufacturer started in 1911 and reorganized as the Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés (SPAD) in 1913. It is so named because of the method of construction of its fuselage. The aircraft is noted for winning the Gordon Bennett Trophy in 1912 and 1913, and for raising the world speed record for aircraft to 130 mph (210 km/h). (Wikipedia)

Domenjoz Glider, original, 1930.

(Author Photos)

Etrich Taube replica, 1913.

The Etrich Taube, also known by the names of the various later manufacturers who built versions of the type, such as the Rumpler Taube, was a pre-First World War monoplane aircraft. It was the first military aeroplane to be mass-produced in Germany.The Taube was very popular prior to the First World War, and it was also used by the air forces of Italy and Austria-Hungary. Even the Royal Naval Air Service operated at least one Taube in 1912. On 1 November 1911, Giulio Gavotti, an Italian aviator, dropped the world's first aerial bomb from his Taube monoplane over the Ain Zara oasis in Libya. Once the war began, it quickly proved inadequate as a warplane and was soon replaced by other designs. (Wikipedia)

(Author Photos)

Fokker C.IVA (Serial No. 4127), Reg. No. N439FK, restoration. The Fokker C.IV was a 1920s Dutch two-seat reconnaissance aircraft.

Examples of the C.IV were delivered to both the Dutch Army Air Corps (30 aircraft) and the Dutch East Indies Army (10 aircraft). It was also exported; the USSR bought 55 aircraft and the United States Army Air Service acquired eight. Twenty aircraft were licensed built in Spain by the Talleres Loring company for the Spanish Army's Aeronáutica Militar. After service as reconnaissance machines the aircraft were then operated as trainers into the 1930s.Fokker C.IVA modified with cabin for passengers for planned non-stop flight Tacoma-Tokyo. Preserved airworthy in Owls Head Museum, Maine.The last flying example of a C.IV is C.IVa s/n4127/N439FK with a Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engine, preserved at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine. It was used in a trans-Pacific attempt in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Pilots Bob Wark and Eddie Brown took out the seats in the passenger compartment and installed a large fuel tank. They also put a small cockpit just in front of the vertical stabilizer with a hand-powered fuel pump inside. In flight, the crew member sitting there would transfer fuel to the main tank in the wing, where it would be fed by gravity into the engine. In this trans-Pacific attempt they planned not to go straight across the Pacific but up the West Coast of North America to Alaska and down the chain of Aleutian Islands, proceeding down the Chinese coast to Tokyo. They took off from Tacoma, Washington and started to head north, but made it only about 100 miles of the way to Vancouver, British Columbia when the engine vapor locked and forced a landing in a field. They had to dump most of their fuel to bring down the weight in order to take off from the field. When they got back in the air, they started heading for nearby Ladner Field, Vancouver to top off the tanks, but they crashed upon landing and decided to give up. They loaded the C.IV onto a Ford AA flatbed truck and brought it back to Washington State. It ended up in Ephrata, Washington, where it was kept outdoors and was eventually badly burned in a grass fire. It sat until 1970, when one of the museum's trustees found it and restored it and donated it to the museum. (Wikipedia)

(Collectie Van Beek Photo)

Fokker Dr. Is of Jasta 12 on the flightline at Toulis, France, 1918.

(Luftstreitskrafte Photo)

Manfred von Richthofen's red Fokker Dr. I, (Serial No. 425/17).

(Author Photos)

Fokker Dr.I Triplane replica (Serial No. 2001), Reg. No. N425FK.

The Fokker Dr.I (Dreidecker, "triplane" in German), often known simply as the Fokker Triplane, was a First World War fighter aircraft built by Fokker-Flugzeugwerke. The Dr.I saw widespread service in the spring of 1918. It became famous as the aircraft in which Manfred von Richthofen gained his last 17 victories (plus two earlier ones in the Fokker F.I prototype in September 1917), and in which he was killed on 21 April 1918. (Wikipdeia)

(Author Photo)

Gemini Space Capsule 1963.

Project Gemini (IPA: /ˈdʒɛmɪni/) was the second United States human spaceflight program to fly. Conducted after the first American crewed space program, Project Mercury, while the Apollo program was still in early development, Gemini was conceived in 1961 and concluded in 1966. The Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews and 16 individual astronauts flew low Earth orbit (LEO) missions during 1965 and 1966.Gemini's objective was the development of space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon. In doing so, it allowed the United States to catch up and overcome the lead in human spaceflight capability the Soviet Union had obtained in the early years of the Space Race, by demonstrating mission endurance up to just under 14 days, longer than the eight days required for a round trip to the Moon; methods of performing extravehicular activity (EVA) without tiring; and the orbital maneuvers necessary to achieve rendezvous and docking with another spacecraft. This left Apollo free to pursue its prime mission without spending time developing these techniques.All Gemini flights were launched from Launch Complex 19 (LC-19) at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida. Their launch vehicle was the Titan II GLV, a modified intercontinental ballistic missile.[note 1] Gemini was the first program to use the newly built Mission Control Center at the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for flight control.[note 2] The project also used the Agena target vehicle, a modified Atlas-Agena upper stage, used to develop and practice orbital rendezvous and docking techniques.The astronaut corps that supported Project Gemini included the "Mercury Seven", "The New Nine", and "The Fourteen". During the program, three astronauts died in air crashes during training, including both members of the prime crew for Gemini 9. The backup crew flew this mission.Gemini was robust enough that the United States Air Force planned to use it for the Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program, which was later canceled. Gemini's chief designer, Jim Chamberlin, also made detailed plans for cislunar and lunar landing missions in late 1961. He believed Gemini spacecraft could fly in lunar operations before Project Apollo, and cost less. NASA's administration did not approve those plans. In 1969, Lukas Bingham proposed a "Big Gemini" that could have been used to shuttle up to 12 astronauts to the planned space stations in the Apollo Applications Project (AAP). The only AAP project funded was Skylab (The first American space station) – which used existing spacecraft and hardware – thereby eliminating the need for Big Gemini. (Wikipedia)