San Diego Air & Space Museum opened 60 years ago

Sixty years ago this week, the San Diego AeroSpace Museum — renamed the San Diego Air & Space Museum in 2006 — opened to the public in Balboa Park.

The date for the opening, Feb. 15, 1963, was chosen to honor the birthday of local inventor John J. Montgomery.

The fledgling museum had an exhibit devoted to Montgomery, who made a controlled flight in a heavier-than-air craft about two decades before the Wright Brothers' famous first powered flight.

In 1978, arson destroyed the priceless early aviation displays housed in the museum. Almost immediately, efforts got under way to rebuild the collection. Two years later, the museum reopened in its present location in Balboa Park's Ford Building.

From the Evening Tribune, Thursday, Feb. 14, 1963:

AEROSPACE MUSEUM OPENS TOMORROW — FLIER’S BIRTHDAY

The San Diego AeroSpace Museum — which covers the science of flight from Montgomery's 1883 flight to a manned landing on the moon — will open at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

A full-size model of the glider John J. Montgomery successfully f lew at Otay in September, 1883, is one of six fullsize aircraft in the museum. Executive Director Charles W. Brown said today.

Montgomery's flight is recognized as man's first, Brown said.

Models of two other Montgomery planes and a precise replica of the Curtiss A-1, the U.S. Navy's first aircraft, are on display.

The opening of the museum, on Zoo Drive near Laurel Street in Balboa Park, is set for tomorrow in honor of Montgomery's Feb. 15 birthday. He was born in 1858 and was killed in a glider crash in 1911.

The celebration will open with a public banquet in the El Cortez Hotel at 6:30 tonight.

Dr. William H. Pickering, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and president of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, will speak.

Master of ceremonies will be Donald P. Germeraad, engineering staff specialist in the life sciences division of General Dynamics-Astronautics. Germeraad flew the Curtiss A-1 replica around San Diego Bay last year during the golden anniversary of naval aviation celebration.

Brown said the AeroSpace Museum will open tomorrow on a “zero budget.” All exhibits have been donated and local aviation organizations have voluntarily prepared the building and set up the displays.

Other exhibits, Brown said, will include:

First—The NASA “Man in Space” display from the Seattle World Fair which shows how man will land on the moon and describes NASA satellite projects

Second—The original X-1 engine which powered the first jet to break the sound barrier.

Third—A seven-foot scale model of the X-15 trainer with a separate “cockpit,” in which visitors can simulate flight.

Fourth—The Wee Bee, the smallest plane ever flown, and the Queen Bee. The planes, designed and built by William Chana and Ken Coward of General-Dynamics Corp., feature modern innovations.

Fifth—A replica of the Convair Sea Dart, the first supersonic seaplane.

Guides will conduct visitors through the museum.