Not every museum comes with drip pans

The military aviation museum has come in quietly, like a night landing of an Able Dog Skyraider.

This World War II/Korean War Navy bomber is one of 23 vintage military aircraft that fill two hangars and an exhibition hall at the museum 3 miles south of Pungo.

Even though the museum has been open since May 2008 and its hangars and checkerboard water tower are plainly visible from Princess Anne Road, and even though there have been a half-dozen newspaper stories about it, many, like this writer, are just waking up to its existence.

The museum, along with its Fighter Factory, a maintenance facility in Suffolk, is home to one of the largest private collections of old-time warbirds in the world.

Although you may not have been there yet, you might have caught a glimpse of its presence. Three of the planes, including a classic

P-51D Mustang ("Double Trouble") piloted by museum owner Gerald Yagen, were scheduled to make a flyover at Harborfest on Saturday. And several get-acquainted events are in the offing.

On Saturday, at 6 p.m.,the museum will sponsor a South Pacific Hangar Dance, with big band music, hula dancers and swing-dance instructors. The following Wednesday, July 15, at

8:30 p.m., there will be a showing of the 1968 British spoof "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines."

Visitors can stroll, as I did, through a gleaming assemblage of Navy and Army Air Corps planes, including storied aircraft such as Yagen's Mustang, a shark-faced Curtiss P-40 flown by "the Flying Tigers," a Boeing Stearman Navy trainer, and a giant PBY Catalina flying boat.

There are replica WWI German fighters, as well,

including the type used by the infamous Red Baron. There's an RAF Spitfire, three strange-looking

Russian Polikarpov fighters, an antiaircraft gun, a German buzz bomb, a 1911 Wright flyer and a "para-dummy," a 3-foot fake parachutist used to fool the Germans during the D-Day landing. And much more.

Tom Owen, a former airline pilot who is a volunteer docent, stood before the Stearman, the classic yellow biplane Kaydet that the Navy used as its primary trainer. More than 10,000 were built between 1933 and 1945.

"They were known as the Yellow Peril because any other pilot flying in the vicinity knew the guy in the front seat was inexperienced and the guy in the back seat was trying to keep the guy in the front seat from killing him," Owen said.

We stopped at the impressive Catalina, with its high wing that makes it look like a space creature.

"If you grew up around here, you would have seen them," Owen said. "This is the airplane that spotted the Bismarck after she sank the (British battleship) Hood. She spotted the Japanese fleet off Midway, enabling our surprise attack.

"It's also the airplane that found remnants of the Indianapolis after she was sunk. They landed on the water and put the crew all over the airplane to keep them away from sharks."

One sign that this is much more than a static museum: the drip pans that catch oil under most of the planes.

That's because, at any given moment, 20 of the 23 aircraft could be wheeled out of the hangars, taxied down the grass runway, and lifted off into the blue Virginia Beach sky.

"They're being maintained to fly," said David Hunt, the museum's director.

"That's the big draw. You listen to people talk, and they say it's nice to see that the planes aren't cordoned off. And the next big wow is, 'You fly all these planes!' "

Upstairs, display cases include period uniforms. There's a movie theater in which I caught part of the star-studded "Battle of Britain," with Royal Air Force pilots valiantly fighting for control of British air space during World War II.

This is just the beginning. The Virginia Beach City Council recently approved the addition of five buildings, including a two-story air tower from England that will be reassembled brick by brick, a German Luftwaffe hangar, a World War I replica hangar, and a spare parts hangar.

A maintenance facility, the Fighter Factory, will be shifted from its location in Suffolk. Twenty more planes will also move over to the Beach.

The museum should not be a stranger to southern Virginia Beach. Many of the same planes flew out of nearby airfields at Creeds and Pungo during World War II.

The fields were abandoned in 1945, but the presence of the planes ought to revive a few memories.

Let me know what you remember.

Paul Clancy, paulclancy@msn.com www.paulclancystories.com