Some years ago I had the pleasure of joining a tour of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's restoration facility in Silver Hill, Maryland. There, I encountered a fascinating collection of aircraft and pieces of aircraft. At each stop the docent conducting the tour provided interesting, sometimes colorful anecdotes. Near a TBF Avenger, he explained that the manufacturer's intent was to produce a truly sturdy, survivable plane. As he put it, "First Grumman built a mockup out of concrete, and then they made the real plane even heavier."
When we got to a B-17 bomber from World War II, he explained that it had been dubbed the "Swoose" because it had been repaired by grafting on other planes' parts. Its nickname came from a popular song about an imaginary bird, half swan, half goose. An Army Air Forces pilot who flew the plane was Captain Frank Kurtz, the father of actress Swoosie Kurtz. Our puckish guide told us: "Many airplanes have been named for women. She is the only woman named for an airplane."
In the years since then, the Air and Space Museum has created the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, near northern Virginia's Dulles International Airport. Inside a building that looks like the world's largest Quonset hut are dozens of classic aircraft, including the Space Shuttle Enterprise and the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.
On a beautiful day this past autumn, the museum hosted a smashing event. The occasion was a "wallbreaking" ceremony to kick off construction of a substantial museum expansion. Included in phase two will be the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. It honors the wife of the late Vice Admiral Don Engen. He was an accomplished naval aviator who began his career as a bomber pilot in World War II and eventually served as director of the Air and Space Museum up to the time of his death in 1999. Mary Engen died in 2006.
The new restoration facility will take the place of the one in Silver Hill. The event described in the program as a wall-breaking was actually a door-breaking. The idea was to smash through a door in the existing wall and thus open up, both literally and figuratively, new spaces that will enlarge an already huge building. Dozens of chairs were arrayed facing the museum's west wall, which included the doorway to the future. As each guest sat down, he or she had first to pick up the pair of safety glasses from a seat. Maybe OSHA would be monitoring the event, or maybe not, but either way the spectators would be protected against flying shards.
Among the speakers on the platform was Jack Dailey, a retired Marine general who is the museum's director. As the speakers described the purpose of the expansion, one of them hinted that General Dailey might have a surprise in store. When it came time for the breakthrough event, the audience was advised to put on the safety glasses. Those on the platform donned hardhats as well. Dr. Wayne Clough, secretary of the overall Smithsonian Institution, was poised at an elaborate contraption that would activate a wrecking ball. On a television screen, a series of numbers appeared, and the audience was encouraged to count down: "Ten, nine, eight . . ."
When the countdown hit zero, Dr. Clough pulled the lever, and the wrecking ball came swinging down from overhead. The ball smashed into the door with a thud and then fell inertly to the deck as its cable parted. The door was still intact, and the audience was stunned into silence. Then someone on the dais announced that Plan B would be necessary. With that, a tractor-like vehicle surged forward, smashed through the door, and opened a large hole to reveal the sunny landscape beyond. The whole thing with the wrecking ball and the safety glasses had been a hoax. This was the Dailey surprise that had been promised—confirmed by an audience member who said, "I was here for the rehearsal yesterday, and they were using [the tractor] then."
All this would have provided a huge laugh for Mary Engen, who had an amiable personality spiced with a sharp sense of humor. In 1943, when young Ensign Engen was courting her, Mary Baker lived near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. He and another pilot simulated dive-bombing the stadium and flew their SBD Dauntlesses very low between her house and that of the next-door neighbor.
That night, as Engen recounted in his Naval Institute oral history, he went to Mary's home. Her dad opened the door and said, "Come here, young man. I want to show you something." He led the pilot to the dining room, showed him a crack down the wall, and said, "Don't you ever do that again."
Don, "scared pea green," said, "No, sir. I won't ever do that again."
As the couple left the house for their date, Mary began laughing, prompting the bewildered aviator to ask, "What are you laughing about?"
She said, "That crack's been there for 20 years."