Western Pennsylvania Aerospace Archive and Gallery

05/10/2026

05/09/2026

This is another Topping contractor’s model. This one is from the early 1980s. The subject is the F-16XL, a machine the ranks with the Northrop F-20 and Douglas F5D as cancelled aircraft that probably should have been built. Essentially the F-16XL was a stretched, tailless F-16 with large compound delta wing.

05/09/2026

This is Jasper, one of the WPAAG’s volunteer staff.

05/09/2026

This is actually model of Scale Composites White Knight 2 launch aircraft. The airplane has been named “Eve”, a nod to its being flown by Virgin Galactic and the mother of that company’s founder, Richard Branson. Eve functions as the first stage for the company’s Spaceship 2 suborbital spacecraft.

In spite of it jet power plants White Knight is no speedster. She cruises at just 140 knots, however she has a service ceiling of 70,000 feet (U-2 country) and can lift over 37,000 lbs.

This model is over 15 years old and has warped a bit, but plenty of details have survived the years including the pitot probe and two ventral whip antennas. It seems to be about 1/96 scale.

04/21/2026

This is very rare contractor’s model that comes complete with a unique base. The is equally unique, a jet powered seaplane strategic bomber - the Martin P6M Seamaster.

The P6M grew from the Navy’s desire to secure a piece of the nuclear deterrence mission from the Air Force. The Navy took a three pronged approach, submarine launched missiles, carrier based strike aircraft, and the Seaplane Striking Force (the P6M Seamaster).

The Seamaster was roughly equivalent to the B-47 or the RAF’s V-bombers, with two big differences - it was designed from the start to pe*****te at low level and it operated off water.

The P6M had a maximum speed of 686 mph. and a range of over 2,000 miles. It featured a rotating bomb bay (like Martin’s XB-51 and B-57) that could be loaded with over 30,000 lbs. of ordnance. Weapons could be loaded through an upper hatch, a useful feature given that the P6M lived floating on water. The seaplane could also carry a refueling pack and double as a tanker.

Sixteen P6Ms were built in three different configurations. To play down the politically charged nuclear mission the Navy frequently referred to the P6M as a minelayer - mission of which it was certainly capable.

The Seaplane Striking Force concept had merit. Seamasters could have been randomly dispersed at various Pacific atolls. With the limits of mid century reconnaissance systems the Soviets could never know where they were all based.

The success of submarine launched missiles and carrier based attackers made the Seamaster surplus to requirements. The program was terminated in 1959, four years after its first flight.

Perhaps Martin should have considered a land based derivative. A low altitude strike aircraft with a range of over 2,000 miles and a 30,000 lbs. bomb load could have met many needs nobody quite knew they had at the time.

The Seamaster was a fascinating and aesthetically pleasing aircraft that had potential.

04/01/2026

The 1969 film Marooned was treated rather harshly by the critics in spite of having an exceptional cast and being solidly authentic. It was lampooned on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, even though it won an Academy Award.

The movie was based upon Martin Caidin’s excellent 1964 novel Marooned. The problem however was that the original novel was written around a single man in a Mercury spacecraft, but by the time Hollywood got around to making the film at had to be rewritten around a stranded three man Apollo crew.

Personally I think the movie was grossly under appreciated. Conversely through I don’t think it deserved the award it got. (The shadows don’t move guys. You can tell you just moved the camera.) And whoever decided they needed to play a “beep, beep” sound every time the Russian spacecraft is on screen should have been fired.

Still it the movie is worth watching and a piece of spaceflight history. This is a promotional booklet from that 1969 film.

04/01/2026

This is a fictional patch from the flawed, but still worth watching, 1969 film Marooned.

03/31/2026

Flak Bait was perhaps the most successful bomber of WW-2. She flew 207 combat missions and absorbed over 1000 hits, losing engines on two occasions, hydraulics on two more, and her electrical system once. Yet she never lost a crewman.

Flak Bait was (ironically perhaps) a Martin B-26, a much maligned machine often called a “widow maker”. The B-26’s early safety record was scandalous, though most of the problems encountered were caused by the Army’s itself, as opposed to flaws in Martin’s design. Indeed when all was tallied up the end of the war Martin’s B-26 “widow maker” had the lowest loss rate of any US bomber.

Facts be damned, the widow maker reputation stuck and all Martin B-26s were quickly retired and scrapped at the end of the war.

This is an actual piece of Flak Bait’s rudder and thus a veteran of those 207 combat missions over Europe in WW-2.

03/30/2026

This is a VERY special piece. This is Cyclone over Singapore by Alexei Leonov. Leonov was a cosmonaut and accomplished artist (not to mention a scientist and banker) who performed the world’s first spacewalk on Voskhod 2 in 1965 and commanded the Russian element of the 1975 Apollo/Soyuz flight. Cyclone Over Singapore is his rendering of the storm he watched from space in 1965. What makes this copy special though is that it is print #9. Alexei Leonov presented this one as a gift to Jim McDivitt (commander of Gemini IV and Apollo IX). Leonov selected print 9 in honor of Jim McDivitt’s Apollo 9 mission.