Day Trips

The Central Texas Wing of the Commemorative Air Force fills the giant wooden hangar at the San Marcos Municipal Airport with vintage flying machines and memories. The first you can touch; the second touches you.

Founded in 1974, the San Marcos unit of the flying museum organization has grown to include rare vintage airplanes and a military museum. Because this is also a maintenance shop, you can often see an aircraft stripped down to its working parts.

"When we first moved [into this hangar], it was a real mess," says Mike Colaluca, one of the many volunteers who work at the museum. Built in the early 1940s, the airplane garage the size of a football field was once part of the San Marcos Army Air Field, where navigators trained during World War II.

The facility was reactivated in the 1950s and renamed Gary Air Force Base in honor of Arthur Edward Gary, the first soldier from Hays County killed in World War II. During the Korean War, it was the largest training base for helicopter pilots and maintenance technicians. When the military left in 1963, the base became the San Marcos Municipal Airport and the Gary Job Corps Center, a technical school.

Colaluca arrived in Central Texas with the helicopter maintenance crews. He married a local girl 50 years ago and stayed after his enlistment ended. He is responsible for many of the displays documenting the history of the base.

The museum is an encyclopedia of World War II fighting paraphernalia, from bullets to model airplanes. The Col. Hank Potter Room is a memorial to Lt. Col. James Doolittle's raid on the Japanese mainland four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Potter was Doolittle's navigator and a Pflugerville resident until his death in 2002.

A flying memorial to Doolittle's Raiders sits out in the hangar. The CAF's B-25J Mitchell is similar to the planes used on Doolittle's legendary bombing run. Of the estimated 11,000 B-25s built, only 35 survive. Christened the "Yellow Rose," the plane is one of only 27 in flying condition.

Also in the museum's inventory is a very rare Bell P-39 Airacobra. By the end of the war, Bell had built 9,558 P-39s with nearly half going to the Soviet Union to use as anti-tank weapons.

In all, there are at least 13 vintage flying machines attached to the CenTex Wing, including two replicas of Japanese torpedo bombers and a Japanese Zero built for the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!.

Originally called the Confederate Air Force, the organization changed its name in 2002. The Commemorative Air Force has approximately two dozen units in Texas and squadrons in almost every state.

The Centex Wing of the CAF is northeast of San Marcos off TX 21. The public is welcome on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, from 9am to 4pm. For information, call 512/396-1943 or go to www.centexwing.com.

964th in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of "Day Trips" 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.