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The main entrance, where visitors first arrive, is the Theodore Gildred Flight Rotunda, dedicated to four pioneer aviators who contributed so significantly to San Diego's rich aviation heritage: Charles A. Lindbergh, T. Claude Ryan, Glenn H. Curtiss and Reuben H. Fleet. The centerpiece of the Rotunda is an exact replica of the Spirit of St. Louis, the San Diego-built plane in which Charles Lindbergh flew the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing. This full-size replica was expertly assembled in 1979 by Museum volunteers, including three craftsmen who helped construct Lindbergh's original Spirit of St. Louis in 1927. Flying above the Spirit is a reproduction of an early hydroplane, the Curtiss A-1 Triad. Capable of operating from land or sea, the A-1 was the U.S. Navy's first airplane, and it, too, made had its early flights in San Diego.
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| Two of San Diego's most famous aircraft: the Curtiss A-1 flies above the Spirit of St. Louis. | |
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Exactly 73 years after Curtiss' first recorded flight of a practical hydroplane, the Museum's reproduction A-1 briefly took to the skies over San Diego Bay on January 26, 1984, for a commemorative flight before being installed in its place of honor in the Rotunda. Inspired by Charles Lindbergh's epic 1927 flight, San Diegan Theodore Gildred, Sr. took off from San Diego on March 13, 1931 in a Ryan B-5 Brougham, beginning a 19-day, 4200 mile goodwill flight to South America. Exactly 50 years later, Gildred's son, Theodore Gildred, Jr., recreated his father's famous flight, using a 1943 Stinson Reliant from the collection of the Aerospace Museum. After the successful completion of the 1981 commemorative goodwill flight, the Aerospace Museum donated the Stinson to the people of Ecuador to help establish their own museum.
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| Lieutenant T.G. Ellyson, the Navy's first aviator, at the controls of the Curtiss A-1. | |
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