Imagine hoisting a 20,000-pound fishbowl 42 feet into the air and then anchoring it so that it’s safe enough for schoolchildren to walk through.
That’s what’s been unfolding at the Air Mobility Command Museum in Dover as the staff prepares to open the Air Force’s oldest operational air control tower as a tourist attraction.
By June, visitors will be able to climb into the historic tower that directed all Dover Air Force Base planes from 1956 to 2009.
In air controllers’ parlance, the tower “pushed tin” during the Hungarian revolution, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the mass murder in Guyana, the Granada invasion, Operation Desert Storm and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The 18-foot octagon has been lying in a field, like a balloon waiting to be blown up, for two years. Meanwhile, a four-story-high perch fashioned out of 6-inch-square steel tubes rose next to the museum. Now the control room of the old tower sits on top of the new pedestal like a cake on a cake stand.
The glass octagon has been anchored and will give visitors a panoramic view of restored planes that could have taxied up when it was new including the propeller-driven C-54, the 50s-era F-106, and the circa-1968 C-9.
At 42 feet, it’s half its original height, but the view still makes heads swivel. “What we’re using it as now is just an educational tool for children,” said museum director Mike Leister. “At 42 feet, they can see all the airplanes. They can see the runways. They can see Delaware 1. They can almost see the bay. They get a tremendous view of the area.”
With the $750,000 project almost complete, Leister and his volunteers are now combing the country for equipment to give visitors a good impression of a working tower from the 1970s-1990s.
Old Air Control Tower’s New Life
Air Mobility Command Museum director Michael Leister discusses converting the former Dover Air Force Base control tower into an exhibit and the tower’s role in the museum’s mission.
The original control boards were recycled for use in the base’s new 11-story control tower, visible from Delaware 1. “I was surprised when I heard that in the new tower, which was some millions of dollars, they actually were able to reuse the equipment,” Leister said.
Leister and his team gleaned some parts for the educational tower online. Air Force personnel around the country have sent parts retired from other sites. A history buff at an Illinois base sends regular “care packages” of parts.
When Staff Sergeant Andy Sokolovich and Technical Sergeant Somchai Adams climbed the steps of the unfinished museum tower last week, they immediately recognized the steep top tier – the only part of the iron stairway from the original tower.
As they stepped into the control room, they recalled the smell of the air and the heat coming through the glass walls. “This is very accurate, the way they depict it,” Sokolovich said. “It is the way it actually was. It makes you appreciate what we have now.”
Adams and Sokolovich described three to four controllers and sometimes an additional four trainees herding pilots from inside the tight octagon, backing their chairs over each other’s earphone wires as controllers stretched and bobbed to get better views of incoming planes. Still, they said, they loved the job.
“I think it’s the coolest job in the Air Force because it’s the only job where enlisted men can tell officers what to do,” Sokolovich joked. “The nice thing about being an air traffic controller is those planes don’t leave without us.”
Adams and Sokolovich now work in a new control tower with three times as much space. It is jokingly referred to as the Taj Mahal. Leister says, “You’ve got everything over there except a Wendy’s.”
“It’s kind of like going from MS-DOS to Windows,” Sokolovich said.
The tower came just in time for the spike in air traffic from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Japanese relief efforts. Dover is involved in moving passengers and cargo to all these hot spots.
“We’re able to manage the stress better because your personal bubble is not always violated – if you have one,” Sokolovich said.
The new 113-foot perch provides a clear sight line all the way to the Delaware Bay, so controllers can hone in on approaching planes, foxes, deer and birds aflutter in a quarry by the field.
“It’s birds at 1 o’clock, birds at 2 o’clock, birds at 3 o’clock. There are birds everywhere,” Sokolovich said. “And if these guys suck up a flock of seagulls we have some huge problems.”
Adams and Sokolovich were excited to hear that tourists will be learning about what air traffic controllers do once the museum tower opens.
“I think it’s awesome. I would be interested in knowing how many people actually know what air traffic controllers do – prior to the CNN coverage of them sleeping,” Sokolovich said, adding that Air Force controllers work in teams.
The bottom floor of the museum tower building will house a big screen TV which will broadcast images captured by cameras inside the control tower. The cameras will provide handicapped visitors views from outside the control tower windows.
Visitors will hear historic broadcasts and live feeds from the new air base tower. Children will take turns reading air control scripts.
The museum, located at Exit 91 off Delaware 1, is free. It is operated by a paid staff of three and 140 volunteers – the largest volunteer group at any Air Force museum.
Volunteers restore planes that sometimes arrive in pieces no bigger than a Rolodex. They also work as tour guides, librarians, archivists and “canteen” operators. Ninety percent have prior military service this includes engineers, pilots, mechanics, even an Air Force auditor.
Ev Sahrbeck, a retired Presbyterian minister from Dover with no military background, volunteers as the museum photographer and serves as “crew chief” of the museum’s hulking C-130. Jane Ward, who once worked at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, drives from Easton, Md., to volunteer.
The main museum is a time machine for aircraft enthusiasts with dozens of historic aircrafts– from a Vietnam-era Huskie rescue helicopter to the last B-17G Flying Fortress to drop a bomb. A few are the last surviving models of their kind.
Visitors to the museum can climb aboard an impeccably restored C-47A Skytrain. It’s the plane that dropped American paratroopers over St. Mere Eglise in Normandy on D-Day, the drop immortalized in the movie “The Longest Day.”
Exhibits include rations from the Civil War and a C-141 cockpit you can sit in.
The museum itself is an exhibit – the historic hangar was once home to a top-secret rocket program.
Visitors 10 years of age and older can “fly” hundreds of aircrafts in flight simulators with experienced pilots as their guides.
For more information on the free museum, visit amcmuseum.org
