What’s Rarer Than a Movie Star’s 1934 Biplane?

Actually Getting to See It Fly. By: Tony Caldwell

The United States is not short on aviation museums. Nearly 350 of them are scattered across the fifty states. Most are privately funded, sustained by the passion of their founders and the cadre of volunteers who keep the lights on. In that respect, the Caldwell Collection is typical.

What is not typical is a living-history museum — one where the objects you came to see, the airplanes, continue to fulfill the purpose for which they were built. They fly.

For many antique aviation aficionados, hearing that an airplane has been acquired by a museum is a sad event. We know that in a very literal sense, that airplane has gone somewhere to die. It will become a static display — slowly decaying beneath its shiny paint, its capabilities eroding until one day it will be impossible for it ever to take flight again.

At the Caldwell Collection, we believe our aircraft should come here not to die, but to fly.

The numbers tell the story.

Of the roughly 331 open aviation museums in the United States, 268 — about eight out of every ten — are privately owned. The other sixty-odd are public institutions: federal, state, or municipal. Most of them are magnificent. The National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. The Smithsonian. The Naval Aviation Museum at Pensacola. They preserve astonishing collections. They just don’t fly them.

In fact, of those 331 open aviation museums, only 55 regularly fly their aircraft. That’s about one in six.

Of those 55, every single one is privately operated. Not one tax-supported institution in America flies its collection.

And here’s where it gets thinner. Of the 55 museums that do fly, 35 are focused on military aviation — warbirds, mostly. That’s nearly two-thirds. Another three are mixed collections that include both warbirds and antiques. Just seventeen museums in the entire country are focused on flying antique aircraft — the airplanes of the Golden Age of Aviation, which we define as roughly 1918 to 1943, and sometimes earlier.

Seventeen.

Geography makes it rarer still.

If you live in central Oklahoma, within 250 miles of El Reno you’ll find 27 open aviation museums. Of those, three fly antique-era aircraft: The Caldwell Collection, Ranger Airfield in Ranger, Texas, and Mid America Flight Museum in Mount Pleasant, Texas.

Stretch the radius to 500 miles and the total climbs to 75 museums — but only six of them are antique-leaning and actually fly their collections:

·         The Caldwell Collection (El Reno, OK)

·         Mid America Flight Museum (Mount Pleasant, TX) — 237 miles

·         American Flight Museum (Topeka, KS) — 273 miles

·         Pioneer Flight Museum (Kingsbury, TX) — 406 miles

·         Vintage Aero Flying Museum (Hudson, CO) — 481 miles

Five, in a region covering most of the south-central United States.

But what about fly-ins?

You could, of course, drive around the country chasing antique airplanes at fly-ins. That’s its own kind of adventure, and a worthy one. But it is catch-as-catch-can — you never know quite who’s going to show up. And more than likely, what you’ll see at a typical fly-in are Stearmans and Cubs.

They are beautiful airplanes, and they are common in the antique community because they are relatively easy to maintain and to fly. Most people who own one or two antique airplanes own one of those.

The Caldwell Collection has airplanes you’d see at a typical fly-in. We also have airplanes where this particular one may be the only one left in the world. Or the only one of its kind ever made. Or the only example still flying.

When you come to see our airplanes fly, you’re not watching another Stearman taxi out. You’re watching history still doing the thing it was built to do — and in some cases, the only surviving example in the world still doing it.

When they fly.

Anytime the weather is suitable, you can likely find one or more of our volunteer pilots exercising the fleet in the evenings or on the weekends. We also maintain a regular flying schedule: up to six weekends a year during the flying season, when our entire team of nearly a dozen expert antique aviators gathers to fly the whole fleet together.

If you want to see a movie star’s 1934 biplane in the air — not behind velvet rope, not shrink-wrapped in gallery lighting, but flying the way it was meant to fly — there are very few places on earth where that’s possible.

We are one of them.

Find the schedule for this season's Mustang Field Flying Days, starting April 11th! https://www.thecaldwellcollection.org/living-wings-weekend