San Diego Air & Space Museum - San Diego, CA
Posted by: 
Metro2
N 32° 43.598 W 117° 09.234
11S E 485579 N 3620992
This impressive Museum, once the Ford Building, is located in San Diego's beautiful Balboa Park.
Look at the satellite image- the Museum was designed to resemble a V-8 Engine.
Waymark Code: WMPY11
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 11/08/2015
Views: 5
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM, formerly the San Diego Aerospace Museum) is an aviation and space exploration museum in San Diego, California, US. It is located in Balboa Park and is housed in the former Ford Building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places...
History
The museum was first opened to the public on February 15, 1963 in the Food and Beverage Building, which had been built in 1915 for the Panama–California Exposition. In 1965 the museum was moved to the larger Electrical Building.
On February 22, 1978 the Electrical Building and the Museum were destroyed in an arson fire. Several one-of-a-kind aircraft were destroyed, including the Beecraft Wee Bee, the world's lightest aircraft, and her sister craft the Queen Bee. A reproduction of the Spirit of St. Louis, built in 1967 by some of the same people who built the original, was also destroyed, along with more than 50 other aircraft, an extensive collection of artifacts and archives, and the International Aerospace Hall of Fame. Owen Clarke, the museum's executive director, said of the $4 million in losses, "This is unbelievably tragic. When you've spent that length of time acquiring history, building something up to where it had international prestige, then see it all disappear in a couple of hours, what else can it be?""