142 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1952 



The Collier Trophy, together with the Brewer Trophy and the Klemin 

 Plaque, will be withdrawn briefly each year for succeeding presenta- 

 tions and then returned to the Museum for continued public view; 

 but the Wright Brothers' Memorial Trophy is the original replica 

 example and will remain permanently in the Museum. Two examples 

 of impressive contrast are provided by new accessions; these are the 

 "Gibson Girl" radio, used for emergency rescue in World War II, com- 

 pared to the Lear automatic pilot and radio equipment used by Capt. 

 C. F. Blair, Jr., in his polar flight from Norway to Alaska in 1950; 

 and the reproduction of the original Wright Brothers' wind tunnel, 

 1902, compared with a modern precision steel wind-tunnel model of 

 the Grumman F7F Tigercat. Other accessions supplement existing 

 exhibits. These are the model of the Cloudster received from Douglas 

 Aircraft as an auxiliary specimen to their World Cruiser Chicago; and 

 the droppable landing gear used in the take-offs for Wiley Post's 

 substratosphere flights. Both the Chicago and Post's Winnie Mae 

 have been in the collection for many years. Also in this category 

 are the original telemetering and film instruments used in the super- 

 sonic flights of the Air Force's Bell X-l, which, now that they have 

 been released by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 

 can be placed with the plane in the Aircraft Building. Among 

 the year's accessions, perhaps the most prophetic specimen is the 

 Delta wing model, one of the basic concepts of this design. Further 

 mention of each new specimen is given in the last part of this report. 



STORAGE 



Some of the difficulties encountered in finding quarters for housing 

 the Air Museum's storage collection have been described. Among the 

 assembled aircraft five were maintained flyable and of those, two — 

 the B-29 Enola Gay and the B-17-D Swoose — were flown to other 

 storage areas. The Beechcraft Bonanza Waikiki Beech was, at the 

 request of the donors, Beech Aircraft, returned to them. The Douglas 

 XB-42 Mixmaster was disassembled and moved away by truck to an 

 Air Force storage area. Even after most of the boxed material had 

 been moved into Building T-7, another partial move had to be made 

 within the building when the roof developed serious leaks, and speci- 

 mens had to be kept away from the dripping and puddling water. 

 Following a careful scrutiny by the Advisory Board and officials of 

 the Air Force and Air Museum of the aircraft that had been gathered 

 at Park Ridge, 16 were scheduled during the fiscal year for separation 

 from the collection. The handling of these planes as they left for 

 other Air Force Bases or educational institutions and elsewhere was 

 a large task. Disassembly of nine full-scale aircraft preparatory to 

 boxing presented unique problems because many of these were obsolete 



