Since it was relatively cool this morning, I grabbed my camera and headed down to Tucson’s Pima Air and Space Museum. My objective? To see and photograph the mighty Martin JRM-1 Mars, aka the Philippine Mars, aka “the Lady,” now reassembled and on display in PASM’s outdoor exhibit area.
And what a sight she is, looming over other aircraft on display. In terms of size, her only rival at the museum is the Convair B-36, larger in length and wingspan but somewhat less in terms of towering over tiny human visitors.
As you’ll recall from a previous Air-Minded photoblog, I’ve been following the saga of the Philippine Mars’ delivery to PASM, promising you photos once she’s on display. The photos you see here are my own (including the one of the B-36): you’ll also want to check out PASM’s excellent photo album of the Philippine Mars’ final journey from Canada to Arizona, where she landed on Lake Pleasant outside Phoenix, was beached, disassembled, trucked in sections to Tucson, and reassembled, finally going on display just 10 days ago.
I hope some of my photos give you a sense of the Mars’ sheer presence. What a beast!
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Restoration projects: they’ve blocked the view into part of the resto yard with shipping containers, but that didn’t stop me from spying a Saab 29 Tunnen peeking out from behind one. Once in pieces, it has now been reassembled, and in the second photo you can see it sitting next to a German Marine F-104, both looking like they’re ready to be put on display. Also in resto, a piece of commercial aviation history, the first Boeing 727 delivered to the airlines in 1963 … it’s been in resto for ages and it doesn’t look like they’ve made any progress getting it ready for display. Under the “carport” of the main resto hangar, the EC-135 tanker/airborne command post, temporarily taken off display for repainting.
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Things I didn’t know existed: a pleasant surprise spotted in the main hangar as I was leaving: the one-off Trautmann RoadAir flying automobile, on loan to PASM from a museum in California. Herbert L. Trautmann designed, built, and patented the RoadAir in 1955, intending to mass-produce it. He got airborne briefly during a high-speed taxi test and discovered it was unstable. In the early 1960s a test pilot reportedly got it up to a hundred feet near San Bernardino. This is the RoadAir’s fuselage section, incorporating the cockpit, engine, propeller, and tail; the detachable wings are presumably in storage somewhere. The last photo is of another new exhibit in the main hangar, an imposing Sikorski HH-60G Pave Hawk, used for special operations and combat search & rescue.
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As always, I took many more photos than are included here. You can see them on my Flickr album of today’s visit by clicking here.
About PASM itself: Although I arrived at opening time on a weekday, there was already a long line of visitors ahead of me at admissions. Most visitors stayed inside the display hangars, though, leaving me plenty of unpeopled vistas for my outdoor photography. Pre-Covid crowds, from what I’ve seen on my semi-annual visits over the past four years, have not returned. The volunteer docent force, of which I was a member, was laid off when the museum closed for the pandemic in March 2021, and has not returned. Visitors can pay to go on tram tours of the outside exhibits, and paid staff members occasionally put on scripted presentations by notable aircraft inside the display hangars; otherwise visitors are on their own, free to roam around the indoor and outdoor exhibits.