The News Journal from Wilmington, Delaware • Page 126

vwvw.delawareonline.com K4 THE NEWS JOURNAL SATURDAY MAY 31. 2008 INSIDE OUR MUSEUMS 4 I I 4 tTI P-'j v. I wfviv- It 1 v. II 'f I "4 1 5 1 Hangar 1301 at Dover Air Force Base is the home of the Air Mobility Command Museum. An air Historic Hangar 1301 at DAFB of history IF YOU GO What Air Mobility Command Museum, an aircraft museum listed on the National Register for its significance as the site of the U.S.

Army Air Force's rocket test center. Where: Dover Air Force Base. Entrance is on Del. 9, less than two miles from Dover Air Force Base's main gate. When: 9 am to 4 p.m.

Closed on federal holidays. Group tours by appointment Call 677-5938. The simulator is open 10 am. to 2 p.m. and other times by appointment Fun fact The museum operates with only four paid staffers because 110 volunteers lead tours, handle simulations, assemble exhibits and restore artifacts.

Info: 677-5938 or www.amcmuseum.org By KATHY CANAVAN Special to The News Journal DOVER What sounds like the far-fetched plot of a homegrown science-fiction film actually occurred in Kent County in the waning years of World War n. American pilots fired air-to-ground rockets on Bombay Hook from 1944 until the war's end. The rocket-testing program was top secret, but anyone who looked up could see Army Air Force planes leaving Dover and cruising over the farmland with large rockets strapped under their wings. Veterans say the Army constructed a jumbo outline of a German battleship in the Delaware marshes as a target. When the war ended, the outline was removed as quickly as it was built.

Last year, about 60,000 tourists from around the world visited Hangar 1301, the national historic site where the rocket program once operated under wraps. The restored hangar is now home to the Air Mobility Command Museum. The free museum features flight simulators, rations from the Civil War to Iraq, two dozen historic aircraft, a C-141 cockpit you can sit in, and a Vietnam-era HH-43 Huskie rescue helicopter with an interactive rotor display. Visitors can climb aboard an impeccably restored C-47A Sky-train, the plane that dropped paratroopers on St. Mere Eglise, in France, on D-Day, the drop immortalized in the film "The Longest Day." The Dover museum is the only place in the world where visitors can see aircraft that are the only surviving models of their kind the C-54M Skymas-ter 44-9030 that was modified to the other side.

There were flubs the white-hot rockets were strapped farther from the wings after some cloth wings caught fire. There were knockout creations a P-47 Thunderbolt was fitted with 10 large rockets, giving it the same firepower as a broadside from a Navy cruiser. There were stunning devices that never took the stage because V-J Day made them unnecessary like the B-17 that was rigged to fire rockets upward at enemy bombers. "During a war, you try all kinds of things to see what's going to work," Leister said. The museum features a aircraft display gallery, plus exhibit rooms.

Aircraft-related movies are shown in an attached theater. The museum also offers free scout aviation badge sessions and two summer camps. haul coal during the post-Worl War II Berlin Airlift, the only surviving C-124A Globemaster II, and the last F-106 Delta Dart fighter stationed at Dover Air Force Base. The museum also houses the last B-17G Flying Fortress to drop bombs and a dazzling F-101B Voodoo, an all-weather fighter-interceptor. Many of the planes were sent to Dover in boxes, like jig-saw puzzles.

Hundreds of volunteers veteran pilots, engineers, mechanics and construction workers put the pieces together again. The museum's centerpiece C-47A that dropped paratroopers on D-Day had been rejected by other museums because the pieces were so damaged. Some assembly was required to restore Hangar 1301, too. Storm damage and years of neglect left its roof with holes the size of a car. The meticulously restored building is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

When the hangar was constructed, Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge didn't exist, arid the Delaware Army Airfield was new. It started life as a municipal airfield called the Dover Airdrome in 1941. It was built with federal money as Washington readied for possible war, museum director Michael D. Leister said. The airdrome was federalized 10 days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he saidi Mosj: Delaware residents believed, correctly, that the Army airfield was a training ground for new pilots or a base for antisubmarine planes searching the Atlantic coastline for German subs.

While those pilots trained on one side of the field, Leister said, identical planes were involved in the top-secret rocket tests on II I I pj-imJlitlM" i i S) i. ABOVE: An infrared sensor is mounted on the nose of an F-106 Delta Dart RIGHT: A visitor experiences the flight simulator with a C-47. An A-10 Thunderbolt making an approach to the runway at Dover AFB flies over a C-130 on display at the museum. .4 Young journalists These students were winners in the 2008 First State High School Communications Contest co-sponsored by The News Journal and the Delaware Press Association, a chapter of the National Federation of Press Women. They include Michelle Onorato and Dan Cole of Brandy-wine High School; Sam Jamgochian of Cape Henlopen High School; Victoria Chang, Emily Callahan, Gretchen Bizendine, Dara McBride, Margaret DiGirolamo, Cate-rina Battaglia, Joshua Crampsey, Emily Guillen, Cathy Lee, Thomas Nixon, Jacob Markiewitz, Jill Wanex, Zachary Warren and Elizabeth Hetterly of The Charter School of Wilmington; Stephen Taylor and Sarah Marg-erison of Glasgow High School; Courtney Dressier, Naomi Parikh, Megan Janson, Camille Sennett, Katya Rivera, Jessica Lear and Julie Wersebe of Milford High School; Harrison Fertig, Joe Gallagher and Billy Wells of Salesianum School; Katrina Medoff, Caryn Lenhoff and Ariel Majidi of Sanford School; and Dan Schultz, Amy Schultz and Morgan Schoeneberger of Wilmington Christian School.

Co-directors of the contest are association members Barbara Roewe and Gloria Galloway. The News JournalRON S0UMAM Bs; I -j rtMa:.