The National Naval Aviation Museum that opened humbly 60 years ago continues to evolve
The newspaper report noting between 500 and 600 people in line to get into the museum could have been a description of the cars recently waiting to come aboard NAS Pensacola to visit the National Naval Aviation Museum for the first time since December 2019. Instead, this fact was part of an article that appeared in the Pensacola News Journal on June 9, 1963, recounting the events of the day before the new Naval Aviation Museum first opened its doors.
The timing of the museum’s 60th anniversary this year is ironic because for tens of thousands of people in the Pensacola area and around the country, 2023 seems like a grand opening. For some, a visit to the museum to view the exhibits and watch the Blue Angels was part of the rhythm of summer vacation. For those who served in uniform, it was a pilgrimage to the past, a place to reflect on perhaps the most impactful period in their lives. Now, they are able to renew these experiences.
What the museum has become began humbly on that June day six decades ago, when John F. Kennedy was in the White House and the Navy had just commissioned its first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise (CVAN 65). Yet, the vision was far-reaching. The caption for an artist’s conception of the original building that appeared in the local newspaper months before the official opening contained the statement that long-range plans for buildings and exhibits were geared toward the goal of someday being on a footing with the National Air Museum (now Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum) in Washington D.C.
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For those visiting on that opening day, that likely seemed impossible. The museum was housed in a modified World War II building of limited size with scant room for aircraft or artifacts. What was on display captured varied elements of the naval aviation experience.
The example of an N3N biplane trainer, known as the “Yellow Peril” to generations of aviators, spoke to the museum’s original purpose as envisioned by its founders led by RADM Magruder H. Tuttle: the education of flight students in the history and heritage of U.S. naval aviation. The first visitors also saw the Mercury space capsule nicknamed Aurora 7 that carried astronaut and naval aviator CDR M. Scott Carpenter into orbit on May 24, 1962. Shortly afterward, Carpenter presented the Wings of Gold that he took with him on the spaceflight to RADM Tuttle, the first of what are now some thousands of artifacts in the museum’s collection.
Another vehicle on display was the gondola from a stratospheric balloon that on May 4, 1961, carried naval aviator CDR Malcolm Ross, Jr., and naval flight surgeon LCDR Victor Prather to an altitude of 113,739 feet. Like Carpenter’s wings, visitors can still see this gondola on display 60 years later.
Also displayed was a tribute to the members of Torpedo Squadron (VT) 8, who launched from USS Hornet (CV 8) under the command of LCDR John Waldron during the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942. All but one perished in their attack against the Japanese fleet. The Navy Cross Waldron received posthumously, donated by his widow, was also an early artifact accepted into the museum’s burgeoning collection.
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That first day of operations for the museum was like no other since, the occasion the centerpiece of an open house on board the air station that included catapult launches from the recently-arrived training aircraft carrier USS Lexington (CVT 16), an air show featuring the Navy’s Chuting Stars parachute team, legendary test pilot Bob Hoover flying a P-51 Mustang, and the Blue Angels in their F-11 Tigers, popular among the crowd with their loud afterburners.
By proclamation of Governor Farris Bryant, June 8, 1963, was designated “Naval Aviation Museum Day.” A headline in the Pensacola News Journal probably captured it best. “NAVY DREAM COMES TRUE.”
Six decades later, both in size and impact, the museum has realized the vision of those who established it. But like the dynamic story it tells, one whose chapters are still being written on flight decks and in cockpits around the world, the National Naval Aviation Museum is ever evolving. Our newest chapter is being able to share that story once again with everyone.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola opened humbly 60 years ago
