This is an unusual blog about an unusual museum. On a recent visit to Indianapolis we visited the Indiana Medical History Museum.
So here’s the deal: The Indiana Medical History Museum is what’s left of what was an Indiana insane asylum. A note on the museum’s website states:
Young children and visitors sensitive to topics such as mental illness, death, and autopsy may find the museum disturbing. Human skeletons and preserved organs are on display at the museum.
All that is true. I wouldn’t take kids here. The Indiana insane asylum used to house 2,000 poor souls who had lost their minds. The building we visited was the pathology center, all that’s left of the facility (the rest has been razed and replaced with condominiums). You can’t just walk up and start visiting this museum; you have to book a tour and the tours only take a few people at a time.
In the lecture hall.
The primary focus of this Indiana pathology department was research focused on unearthing the causes of insanity. Our tour guide explained that back when the facility was an active insane asylum, a third of the patients were insane as a result of tertiary syphilis. When it was discovered that this form of insanity was due to a microbe (the syphilis spirochete), further research focused on finding microbes that caused other forms of insanity (they didn’t find any). The museum’s website states that it shows the beginnings of modern psychiatry.
Another view inside the lecture hall.
The autopsy room and its equipment were interesting. I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have been a doctor in the early 1900s working here. Things sure have changed.
The autopsy room.Autopsy tools.An iron lung for infants.
The library was interesting. In its day, it was perhaps one of the most advanced on the planet. It’s what they had to work with.
Inside the library.
The building and our tour guide’s description of the place were somber and respectful. Still, the tour had the feel of a Steven King novel. Scattered equpment from the early days of treating mental illness filled the hallways. Some of it was used for electroshock therapy. Other tools were for lobotomies. It’s what they had to work with back then.
Steeple tops from the insane asylum buildings.Camera equipment for photographing microscope slide results.
Admission was a modest $10 ($9 if you are a senior citizen), and the tour takes about an hour or so. I thought it was interesting. It sure was different.
Ohio this time, folks, and today’s feature is the National Museum of the United States Air Force. We had been exploring Indiana, and Dayton was a just a short hop across the border. This was part of our great visit with good buddy Jeff, and wow, did we ever have a good time.
The official name, as denoted in the title of the blog, is a mouthful. I’ve heard of this place as the Wright-Patterson air force museum, and it’s been around for a long time. Dayton is a hop, skip, and a jump away from Vandalia, and my Dad visited the air museum decades ago when he competed in the Grand American Trapshoot in that city when I was a kid. I always meant to get here, and thanks to Jeff and my navigator’s travel planning (my navigator, of course, is Susie), I finally made it.
Dayton was also home to the world famous Wright brothers. I recently read a great book about The Wright Brothers by David McCullough, which added greatly to my understanding of their accomplishments.
There were many other early aircraft on display. I probably should have noted what they all were. But I was having too much fun taking available light photos with my Nikon. There’s no flash in any of the pictures in this blog.
There are four main halls in the museum, each dedicated to a specific aviation era. The first is focused on the early days (that’s what you see in the photos above), and the last is focused on more modern military aircraft. There are also exhibits of presidential aircraft, missiles, nuclear weapons, and more.
The missile hall was particularly cool. The photo immediately below shows a nuclear weapon.
The missiles made great photo subjects. I had two lenses with me: The Nikon 24-120 and the Nikon 16-35. Most of these shots are with the wide angle 16-35. Both of these lenses do a great job, the 16-35 even more so in these low light, tight locations.
Here’s another photo of a nuclear (in this case, thermonuclear) bomb. It’s hard to believe that much energy can be packed into such a small envelope.
The Wright-Patterson Museum also had several experimental aircraft. These make for cool photos.
That’s Chuck Yeager’s airplane below…it’s the one he used for breaking the sound barrier (or it’s one just like it).
There was an Apollo display, including the actual Apollo 15 capsule.
Our tour guide told us something I didn’t know before. If the lunar landing module was damaged and couldn’t be repaired such that it could dock with the lunar orbiter, the plan was to leave the guys who landed on the moon there.
One of the displays showed an Apollo astronaut suited up for a moon walk. What caught my attention was the Omega Speedmaster in the display. There’s a very interesting story about that watch the Bulova chronograph worn when one of astronauts was replaced just prior to launch. You can read that story here. I wear one of the modern Bulova lunar pilot watches.
Here’s one of my favorite airplanes of all time: The Lockheed C-130 Hercules. It’s an airplane that first flew in 1954. Analysts believe it will still be flying in 2054. Imagine that: A military aircraft with a century of service.
A long time ago, I went through the Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and I made a few jumps from a C-130. My last jump was from the C-141 Starlifter jet, an aircraft that was retired from military service several decades ago (even though it was introduced way after the C-130). The C-141 jump was a lot more terrifying to me than was jumping from a C-130.
In a C-130 you have to jump up and out to break through the boundary layer of air that travels with the C-130. Because you jump up and out, it was like jumping off a diving board…you never really get a falling sensation (even though you drop more than a hundred feet before the parachute opens). On a C-141, though, you can’t do that. If you jump up and out, you’ll get into the jet exhaust and turn yourself to toast. The C-141 deploys a shield just forward of the door, so the drill is to face the door at a 45-degree angle and simply step out. When that happens, you fall the same distance as you do when exiting a C-130, but you feel every millimeter. It scared the hell out of me.
The Museum also has a section displaying prior presidential aircraft…different versions of Air Force One. That was also fascinating. One of the Air Force One planes is the 707 that was took President Kennedy to Dallas, and then returned with his body that afternoon.
Jackie Kennedy would not allow JFK’s coffin to be stowed in the freight compartment on the flight back to Washington. She wanted it to fly with her in the passenger compartment. An enterprising flight engineer obtained a hacksaw and cut away part of the bulkhead just ahead of the rear passenger door, which allowed the coffin to make the turn into the aircraft.
There were other presidential aircraft on display as well, including the one used by Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Not everywhere a president flies can handle a large jet, so sometimes Presidents use small executive jets. One of the first of these bizjets used for Air Force One (any airplane carrying the President is designated Air Force One) was a small Lockheed. President Lyndon Johnson called the small Lockheed executive jet below “Air Force One Half.”
It was a good day, and a full day. Even spending a good chunk of our day at the Museum, we were only able to see two of the four halls. That made for a good day, but if you want to see the entire Museum, I think it would be wise to allow for a two-day visit.
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Wow, this is cool: The Indianapolis Motor Speedway! That photo above? I snapped it as the Indy car was entering Turn 3 at about 200 mph, panning the camera with the car to blur the background and get the car as sharp as possible (which is a bit of a challenge when your subject is doing 200). There were a lot of photo ops at Indy, and I sized most of the photos at 900 pixels to show off a bit. We were having a good time.
We didn’t see the race (it’s today, and it starts about three hours from when this blog was posted). We were in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago to visit with good buddy Jeff, whom you’ve seen in other recent blogs. Jeff took us all over Indianapolis and the surrounding areas, and our itinerary included the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
We walked the huge infield area. The track is a 2.5-mile oval and that gives it plenty of room on the infield (there’s even a golf course in the infield). One of the best parts is the museum, which houses historic cars and winners of past Indy 500 races.
After spending some time in the museum, we went up into the stands to watch the cars practicing. The Indy 500 is, as the name states, a 500-mile race, and with the cars running over 200 mph, it takes about 2 hours. I can see it producing more than a few headaches, sitting out in the sun and listening to the high-pitched and loud whine of the cars whizzing by. Our day was perfect…we took in what we wanted to see and I shot a lot of photos.
There is a very cool photo of Mario Andretti in the Indy 500 Museum. The story behind it is that the photographer asked Mario Andretti if he could grab of photo of his rings, and Mr. Andretti posed as you him in the photo above.
There was also an Indy 500 simulator in the museum. It let you “race” for about a minute, but I didn’t last that long. The simulator included motion in the steering wheel and in the seat, I felt woozy as soon as I started, and I had to stop shortly after I started. I guess that makes me an official Indy 500 DNF (did not finish).
My favorite photo of the day is this selfie I grabbed of yours truly and good buddy Jeff reflected in the radiator cover of a vintage Miller race car.
So there you have it…our day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I’ll be watching the race today.
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It was an epic battle, fought over just three days, with monstrous casualties incurred by both sides due to a deadly combination of improved weaponry and Napoleonic tactics. Muskets transitioned from smoothbores to rifled barrels (greatly enhancing accuracy); military formations (not yet adopted to the quantum leap forward in accuracy) fought in shoulder-to-shoulder advancing columns. Both sides held their fire until the Union and Confederate armies were at can’t-miss distances. It was brutal. Gettysburg suffered 51,000 casualties. Eleven general officers were killed. It was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, but it was turning point. General Robert E. Lee, the previously invincible and charismatic hero of the South, had been soundly defeated. General George Meade, appointed to command the Union troops just days before the battle, achieved a tactical victory regarded by his superiors as a strategic failure (Lincoln later said Meade held the Confederate Army in the palm of his hand but refused to close his fist).
Perhaps best known for Lincoln’s Gettysburg address given months after the fighting (delivered at the dedication of a cemetery), Gettysburg is a town, a free National Military Park, and hallowed ground. But first, read these 275 words…275 of the most elegant words ever assembled by anyone:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Elegant, eloquent, and to the point: Lincoln spoke for a short two minutes after a two-hour speech by a former Harvard College president. Lincoln wrote the words himself (not, as rumor would have us believe, on the back of an envelope during the train ride to Gettysburg, but carefully crafted by Lincoln in the White House and then polished upon his arrival in Gettysburg). No speechwriters, no opinion surveys, no communications experts as would be the case today. I wish that in a nation of 330 million people we could find another Lincoln (rather than the continuing cascade of clowns we’ve had to choose from in the last several elections).
I first visited Gettysburg 60 years ago as a little kid and I was a little kid again on this visit. Gettysburg was way more wonderful than I remembered but still the same. The Visitor Center is new and better equipped. There are more monuments (approximately 1,350 such monuments; you will see just a few in this blog). The battlefield remains the same. It is impressive. You need to see it.
There are many exhibits in the Gettysburg Visitor Center, including two large displays of Union and Confederate sidearms.
You can take your car or motorcycle through Gettysburg National Military Park on a self-guided tour, you can take a bus tour, or you can hire a guide. Any of these approaches are good.
Cannon line a typical road through the Gettysburg battlefield.
The Battle of Gettysburg occurred over three days (July 1 to July 3, 1863) that changed the calculus of the Civil War. Lee took his Army of Northern Virginia north, hoping to continue an unbroken string of Confederate victories, so sure of his likely success that he ignored the tactical advice of his generals. He prevailed on the first day, but flawed tactics and a combination of Union brilliance and resolve turned the tide and the War. It culminated in what has become known as Pickett’s Charge, a Confederate uphill advance across a mile of open land into unrelenting Union cannon fire. The Union artillery had the reach (two miles of direct fire; there were no forward observers adjusting fire as we have now). The cannons were deadly, and then troops closed to small arms distance, and then finally to hand-to-hand combat. More than 12,000 of Pickett’s men marched into the Union killing fields; nearly half were foolishly lost. It was the turning point for everything: The South’s success, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Civil War.
The views are magnificent. We were aided by an overcast day, with diffuse lighting that made for improved photography.
Numerous state militia fought at Gettysburg. Each of the states and their militia erected monuments in the years following the Civil War. The New York monuments were always the largest, at least until New York completed the last of its statues and structures. Pennsylvania, waiting and watching patiently, then built a monument that dwarfed New York’s best efforts. But all are impressive.
The 91st Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Little Round Top near Cemetery Ridge. This area was the high ground held by the Union.
The two armies had been maneuvering near each other, and as is usually the case in such things, first contact was accidental. The Confederate forces initially prevailed and their leader, General Robert E. Lee, assumed this success would continue. Lee’s subordinate’s told him it would not, as they did not hold the high ground. Lee pressed ahead anyway, suffering a defeat that marked a turning point (one of many) in the Civil War.
A view from Little Round Top, looking down into the killing fields of Pickett’s Charge. 12,000 men marched forward; more than half were lost in a single afternoon.
Gettysburg National Military Park is a photographer’s dream, and many battlefield areas present dramatic photo ops. The monuments are impressive and more than a few offer several ways to frame a photo.
The 44th and 12th New York Infantry monument on Little Round Top at the south end of Cemetery Ridge, framing the field of battle. This is a massive and impressive monument.Artillery lines in Gettysburg National Military Park. Many of the cannon are original items and saw actual use in the Battle of Gettysburg.When the ammunition ran out, it was hand to hand fighting at Gettysburg. This is the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Cemetery Ridge. The 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry played a key role in defeating the Confederate advance known as Pickett’s Charge.
I was up early the next morning before we left Gettysburg, and I returned to the battlefield to capture a better photo or two of the State of Pennsylvania monument. It’s the largest in Gettysburg National Military Park. I was so impressed by it the day before I forgot to get a photo.
The State of Pennsylvania’s monument, at 110 feet tall, is the tallest of 1350 monuments on the Gettysburg battlefield. You can climb an interior spiral staircase to see the entire battlefield from this monument.The beautiful 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry monument framing the State of Pennsylvania monument. The tree trunk beneath the horse was necessary to support the statue’s weight. Interestingly, the 8th Pennsylvania Cavalry did not take part in the fighting at Gettysburg, but instead guarded supply lines in Maryland.
The country roads leading to Gettysburg, and the riding in Pennsylvania, are way beyond just being good. Several rides to Gettysburg are memorable, and everything on the battlefield is accessible via an extensive network of narrow lanes. Take your time when navigating the Park’s interior battlefield lanes; this is an area best taken in at lower speeds.
A 180-degree panoramic view from Little Round Top. Click on this image to see a larger version.
Getting to Gettysburg is straightforward. From the south take Interstate 83 north and State Route 116 east. From the east or west you can ride Interstate 76 and then pick up any of the numbered state routes heading south. If you are coming from points southwest, Maryland is not too far away and the riding through Catoctin Mountain Park on Maryland’s State Route 77 is some of the best you’ll ever find.
The best kept secrets at Gettysburg? On the battlefield, it’s Neill Avenue, also known as the Lost Avenue. It’s the least visited area of Gettysburg National Military Park, and probably the most original with regard to how the battlefield looked on those three fateful days in July 1863. As for good places to eat, my vote is for The Blue and Gray Bar and Grill in downtown Gettysburg (just off the square in the center of town; try their chili) and Mr. G’s Ice Cream just a block away. Both are excellent.
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Looking both large and deceptively small from the outside, the Indiana War Memorial is located in the center of Indianapolis. Susie and I were there for a visit with good buddy Jeff, whom I’ve known since before kindergarten. We both migrated west after college, both of us did so for work, and Jeff staked his claim as a Hoosier. We spent a few days recently bopping around Indiana and Ohio and it was a hoot. One of the first places we stopped was the center of downtown Indianapolis, and we wandered into the amazing and impressive Indiana War Memorial. It wasn’t on our itinerary; it just looked interesting, it was open, and we entered.
The name is a bit misleading, as the Indiana War Memorial is both a memorial and a world class military museum, tracing the history of American combat from the Revolutionary War to our most recent conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The building itself is impressive, with tall halls and huge lower level display areas. The displays are impressive. So is the architecture.
The Indiana War Memorial wasn’t crowded; in fact, we had the place to ourselves.
Peering up in the main tower, this hall focuses on The Great War.
Moving on to the lower floors, the displays focus on the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War II, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan conflicts.
This is an interesting exhibit from Gettysburg, which we had visited just a few weeks ago.
I enjoyed the small arms displays. That’s my buddy Jeff in the photo below.
One of the last halls we viewed focused on the Vietnam War. This is a Huey Cobra helicopter with a three-barreled Gatling gun mounted in the nose.
Admission was free, and during our visit we had an extra treat. When we first entered the Indiana War Memorial, we had a nice chat with a guy about our age. Jeff mentioned that his father had served in World War II, and that I had served in the US Army. Our new friend told us he had been in the Air Force. As the conversation progressed, we learned that we were speaking with a retired general officer, who was now the Director of the Indiana War Memorial (General Stewart Goodwin).
Susie and I were channel surfing on Netflix the other night and a trailer for Operation Mincemeat appeared. It looked like it might be interesting so we hit the play icon. Wow, this movie is great. The story is about the British military intelligence deception operation to convince the Nazis the 1943 Allied invasion of Europe would begin in Greece and not Sicily. Everyone knew Sicily was the logical choice, including the Germans, but the Brits managed to pull off a miracle and the Germans diverted the bulk of their forces to Greece. I won’t tell you much more about how MI5 did this (beyond what the trailer below shows) because I don’t want to spoil the movie for you.
Operation Mincemeat is a dark, foreboding movie, as it should be. Literally tens of thousands of lives and indeed, the future of humanity, hung in the balance.
One of the interesting characters in this true Operation Mincemeat story is a mid-level British Intel officer named Ian Fleming.
Johnny Flynn playing Ian Fleming in Operation Mincemeat. Here Fleming is intrigued by a Q Branch watch with a bezel that becomes a buzz saw. You have to pay attention or this and other scenes that inspired 007 will zip right by.
Yes, that Ian Fleming…the one who went on to create and write the James Bond stories. He and several other MI5 officers were working on spy novels while the real Operation Mincemeat was unfolding. At one point, the man in charge (played to perfection by Colin Firth) exclaimed, “My God, is there anyone here who isn’t writing a spy novel?” There were other James Bond references, including the senior MI5 person everyone referred to as “M,” Q Branch, and more.
Trust me on this: If you are a James Bond fan, you will love Operation Mincemeat.
Nah, that’s too restrictive. Anyone who enjoys a good movie will enjoy Operation Mincemeat. It’s on Netflix and it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. I enjoyed it so much I watched it again from start to finish the next day. It was that good. You can thank me later.
I grew up in the South, way deep south, which means open-wheel automobile racing has always been a little suspect to me. Stock cars built in the good old USA slamming into each other every corner was auto racing. Tracks were small ovals either paved or dirt and the fence wouldn’t save you if a Chevelle climbed the wall just right. Stock car racing was total immersion. Saturday night, roasted peanuts, greasy pizza, burning rubber and beer will transport me right back to Hialeah Speedway in the late 1960s. For a young punk it was a glorious way to pass a hot Florida evening.
Yankees raced open-wheel. Yankees to me were any people that lived north of Fort Lauderdale. I couldn’t tell the difference between Indy cars and Formula One cars and truthfully, I still can’t. The open wheel cars raced far away from the crowd: almost nothing ever hit you at an Indy car race.
Roger Penske was a successful Indy car team owner before he started renting big yellow moving vans and he has a multibrand luxury car dealership with a small museum attached. I had time to kill so I wandered over to the museum with a southern-chip-on-my-shoulder, cocky, dirt oval attitude: Show me what you got, Big Daddy.
The museum is small, all on one floor with a gift shop and a lunch counter a floor above the display cars. Turns out Penske won the Indy 500 more frequently than you would assume and the 500-mile winners in the museum are the actual race cars tidied up for display.
The first engine on your left as you enter the place is Mercedes-Benz 500/265E. Right off the bat with the foreign car stuff, you know? This sweet looking 3-1/2 liter V-8 put out 1024 horsepower at the relatively low RPM of 9,800. The first time out this engine won the pole and the Indy 500 in 1994 with Al Unser behind the wheel. The Mercedes 500 was the first car to pull off this stunt so I guess they got it right the first time.
Mark Donohue won the 1972 Indy 500 in this Drake-Offenhauser powered McLaren M16B. With a 4-speed transmission the car burned through methanol 75 gallons at a time. The car averaged 191 miles an hour for the race, which is about 91 miles an hour faster than the cars on my beloved dirt ovals.
Rick Mears of off-road racing fame won the 1984 Indy 500 in a Penske-March car powered by a Cosworth-Ford. Averaging 207 miles per hour I’m guessing the Cosworth fairly sipped fuel from its 40-gallon methanol supply. Or, maybe the pit crew was really fast. When you’re circling in top gear all the time you don’t need more than the four speeds the March transmission provided.
Now we’re getting somewhere: a Chevy 2.65 liter V-8 pumping out 720 horsepower at 10,700 RPM. This engine won the 1991 Indy 500 with Rick Mears behind the wheel again. This engine went on to win 72 races.
I find it hard to believe that these tiny, multi-plate clutches can hold up for 500 miles pushing 200 miles per hour. The things aren’t much bigger than a motorcycle clutch. Maybe I’m wrong? Is this an accessory drive?
Penske didn’t just run teams, he raced real cars like I like. This Pontiac super-duty 421 cubic-inch beast won the 1963 Riverside 250 with Penske behind the wheel. A Borg Warner T10 handled the shifts, Monroe Regal Ride absorbed the bumps and a Carter AFB mixed the fuel/air. I guarantee the bodywork was not this nice in 1963.
Joey Logano won the 2015 Daytona 500 with this Penske-chassis Ford Fusion. The 358 cubic-inch Ford put 775 horsepower to the famed Daytona high banks.
The photos above show an unusual Lola T-152, 4-wheel drive Penske car from 1969. It’s plenty potent with 850 horsepower squeezed from the Drake-Offenhauser engine at only 9000 RPM. That big hair drier on the side must have made lots of boost. This car also lugged around 75 gallons of methanol.
There are more cars and engines at the Penske museum but I’m leaving them out so you’ll have to visit the museum to see them all. Penske even built a small racetrack for Mini Coopers behind the museum but that area has been taken over as a parking lot by the dealerships. Land Rover enthusiasts have a couple of artificial hills to practice on but the lady who runs the museum said that they don’t use those hills any more.
I came away from my visit impressed by Penske’s many racing successes. He’s not just a rental truck guy. I’ll go as far as to say if Penske raced at Hialeah Speedway back in the late 1960s he would have probably banged fenders with the best of them and carried many golden trophies somewhere north of Fort Lauderdale. Where the Yankees are from.
The Penske Racing Museum is located at 7125 E Chauncey Lane in Phoenix, Arizona.
Another day, another Bill’s Old Bike Barn story. Wandering through the collection (I should say collections, but that’s a topic we’ll cover in the next Bill blog), I had to wonder: With all the absolutely stunning vintage motorcycles in his collection, which is Bill’s favorite? Which is the one he prefers above all others?
So I asked the question. I expected to hear something along the bar-and-shield line, as many of the machines in the barn are drop-dead-gorgeous vintage Harleys. Or maybe an Indian. You know, the V-twin thing. ‘Merica, and all that. Bill served in the US Army and he’s a patriot. Bill’s favorite motorcycle would most likely be a big V-twin from either Springfield or Milwaukee, I thought.
Nope. I was wrong. Think Nuremberg. As in Germany.
Right about now, you’re probably thinking BMW. But you’d be wrong, too. Bill’s personal favorite ride is a 1952 KS601 Zündapp. Take a look:
Bill and his 600cc KS601 1952 Zündapp.
Bill’s answer to my favorite moto question surprised me, both by his selection and his immediate ease in offering it up. “It’s my Zündapp,” he said, leading me over to the bike you see in these photos. “When I bought it, it only had 2,600 kilometers. It’s in original condition and it is the smoothest motorcycle I’ve ever owned.”
Check out the odometer on Bill’s Zündapp!A fuel tank that looks like a fuel tank. Bill’s Zündapp is a classy motorcycle.
A Zündapp!
So, who exactly is Zündapp and what’s their story? Glad you asked.
Zündapp started in 1917 as a bomb company. That’s right. Bombs. Munitions. Things that solve big problems quickly. The Zündapp name comes from combining the German words zünder and apparatebau (igniter and apparatus), which are the two things you need for a munition (the detonator and the secondary, or main, explosive). The detonator gets the explosion started and the secondary explosive does the heavy lifting. In 1919, after World War I ended, Germany was prohibited from things like making bombs (the Treaty of Versailles and all that). Zündapp had a choice: Go out of business or start making something other than bombs. They went with Door No. 2, and Door No. 2 led to motorcycles.
Zündapp first made two-strokes with engines from another manufacturer; they started making their own two-stroke engines in 1924. By the 1933 Berlin Motor Show, Zündapp was making four-stroke boxer twins along with their line of two-stroke machines. The four-strokes were called K models in a nod to their shaft drive (kardan means shaft in German). Just before World War II, Zündapp introduced the KS600 flathead boxer twin, with shaft drive, a pressed steel frame, and four-speed transmission. 1951 saw the introduction of the KS601 (the model you see in today’s blog). It featured a tubular steel frame, telescopic front suspension, and Zündapp’s 592cc overhead valve boxer twin engine. It looks a lot like a BMW motor (I supposed to the Germans, a Harley probably looks a lot like an Indian).
The Zündapp is a very interesting motorcycle. One of the Zündapp’s more interesting features is its interchangeable front and rear wheels (they were designed to allow easy tire rotation). When introduced, the KS601 was Germany’s fastest road bike. The Zündapp KS601 also enjoyed a reputation for excellent reliability. Zündapp built fewer than a thousand KS601 motorcycles through 1958, and what you see in this blog is one of them. Production ended in 1958 when Bosch acquired Zündapp.
I could have spent more time examining Bill’s Zündapp. It has not been restored. It is 100% original. It is one year younger than I am. It’s the first Zündapp KS601 I’ve ever seen. It exudes a magnificent patina, and it does so elegantly. I’m going to guess that wherever Bill rides it, he has the only one. It’s easy to see why it is Bill’s favorite.
Catch up with our earlier Bill’s stories! Bill Morris is the real deal, and Bill’s Old Bike Barn is one of the most interesting motorcycle museums I’ve ever visited. We’re doing on a series on the man and the museum; this is our fourth installment.
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My grandparents on my mother’s side owned a cabin in Cashiers, North Carolina. Built on the side of a steep hill you had to hand carry everything up to the cabin. Maybe if we had a 4-wheel drive we could have made it to the cabin, but my grandparents owned a Volkswagen van. The VW would start spinning its wheels halfway up. Mr. Price, who also lived in Cashiers, built the cabin. It was a slow process as The Grands paid as they went, never going into debt for the place. Mr. Price was easy going and worked on the place whenever he was sent money.
After about ten years of walking to the cabin my Grandfather, Grandmother, Billy Mac and me poured a concrete driveway to the cabin. It was about ten feet wide. The concrete trucks couldn’t make it all the way to the top so we manhandled buckets and buggies to pour that section. Further down we could just dump it out of the truck into the forms.
The job was easier than it sounds because we only had to strike off the top and finish the edges. The driveway had a concave shape to funnel water down the middle like a big sluice. We left the driveway as poured to provide a high traction, rough surface. At intervals we troweled an expansion groove. All in, the driveway was probably 300 feet long. After the driveway was built a car could make it to the cabin and it was real luxury not having to carry stuff up the steep, muddy driveway.
The road to the cabin was dirt, winding past two small lakes that were full of fish. Several roads split off the main road and at the last split before Gran & Gramp’s cabin there was a house with a purple-pink, GT750 Suzuki parked out front. The GT had three, flat black expansion chambers fighting for position underneath the crankcase.
I had read about the Suzuki triple cylinder in Popular Mechanics magazine but this was the first time I saw one in real life. Popular Mechanics did a road test on the bike and loved the big Suzuki. It got fairly good fuel mileage and Suzuki’s complex CCI oiling system was stingy with the injector oil. The Suzuki 750 was regarded as a touring bike, not at all like Kawasaki’s mad, mad three-cylinder H2 750.
The air in the mountain valleys carried sound in mysterious ways and when the owner of the Suzuki started the bike those expansion chambers cackled in on me from all directions at once. Was he above me, below me? Heading away or towards me? It was surround sound of the very best kind. I had a Honda Mini Trail and would ride over to the Suzuki house just to look at the bike. Polished aluminum cases, a color-coordinated radiator, big tachometer and speedo with a water temperature gauge: it didn’t seem like a touring bike to me. It seemed like something from another planet.
In the USA GT750s haven’t reached silly H2 prices yet. Their slightly boring reputation keeps the price low-ish. The engines last quite a long time and a GT750 turning 50,000 miles without a rebuild would not be unusual. A quick Google search brings up runners from $3500 to $8000 and that’s not bad compared to the overly complex modern stuff we are faced with at the local Mega Brand Dealer.
Probably the later GT750s are better motorcycles than the early ones. Suzuki improved the front brake and bumped up the power slightly towards the end of production. The first GTs had a Buck Rodgers look that you either loved or hated. I loved it. Really, I’d be fine with any year. The double-sided, twin leading shoe front brake on the first one was a thing of beauty and I’m guessing stopped good enough.
Of all the three-cylinder Suzukis I think the 750 is best. The 380 was a dog, the 550 was almost unnoticeable on the bike scene in those days. The big, water-cooled GT 750 made a huge splash (ha) and still ranks as one of my one-day, must-have dream motorcycles.
The Suzuki GT 750 is a sensible classic that you can ride everyday and cross the country on if the mood hits you. That’s not why I want one. I want one because of the sound it made in the mountains of North Carolina. I can hear it as I type this sentence, a cross between the whining of a tornado and the keys of a mechanical typewriter slapping onto the page.
Paso Robles’ Estrella Warbird Museum is way more than just warbirds. There are military vehicles, a munitions display, classic cars, race cars, vintage motorcycles, small arms, and more. And then it’s in Paso Robles, a worthy destination all on its own. We’ll touch on each of these in this blog.
First, the warbirds. There are a bunch on display, and there are two I feel most connected with personally…one is the F4 Phantom, and the other is the F-16 Air Combat Fighter.
That’s an F4 at the top of this blog. It’s what the USAF was flying when I was stationed at Kunsan AFB back in the mid-1970s, and it is an impressive airplane. I was on a HAWK air defense site just off Kunsan, high up on a mountain top overlooking Kunsan. We could pick up the F4s as they started their takeoff roll on Kunsan’s runway. When our high-powered illuminators locked on, the pilots knew it in the cockpit. They’d take off on full afterburner (a sensory and sensual delight for anyone who witnessed it), execute a quick 180, and then fly directly at my missile site coming in at just under Mach 1 below the top of our mountain. They were trying to break the lock my scope dopes had on them. Then, at the last minute, they’d climb just enough to clear the tops of the HIPIR’s Mickey Mouse ears. The radars would flip around 180 degrees in two axes with such force that one side of the radar’s support legs would clear the ground by 6 inches. Ah, those were grand and glorious days. At night, in the Kunsan AFB Officers Club, the Air Force jet jocks would ask me about the radars. My answer was always the same: Sorry, I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. They’d laugh. They thought I was joking.
When I left the Army, my first job was on General Dynamic’s F-16 engineering team, and just about every defense industry job I’ve had since was somehow associated with something on that airplane. Munitions, 20mm Gatlings, fuel tanks, aerial refueling systems, ejection seats…it all seemed to come back to the F-16. I loved being around that airplane.
Well, okay…maybe one more airplane, and that’s the F-86. Yeah, it’s been obsolete for decades. But when I was at Kunsan AFB in the mid-1970s, the ROK Air Force (as in Republic of Korea) still flew the F-86. It’s a svelte little bit of a fighter, and it was on display at the Estrella Warbirds Museum.
As soon as you enter the Estrella Museum, there’s a small arms display. Hey, I love that sort of thing, and this display grabbed my attention.
I caught something the Estrella curators missed. See those red arrows in the photo above? That rifle was labeled as a Mosin-Nagant. I know my Mosins, and this wasn’t one of them. It was maybe a Mauser, but most definitely not a Mosin. I told one of the docents. She thanked me, but I don’t think she understood what I was telling her.
The Estrella Museum had a munitions display, too. It was cool. I like bombs and bullets. And mines. A mine is a terrible thing to waste, you know.
The Museum also houses the Woodland Automobile Display, which includes classic cars and race cars with an emphasis on dirt track oval racers. The collection was extensive, interesting, and photogenic.
There were military vehicles and motorcycles, too. I’ll get to those in a second, but first, take a look at this. How about a water-cooled Harley Knucklehead engine used in midget racing? That’s what you see in the photo below.
The engine you see above is a Drake-modified Harley V-twin, and it was way ahead of its time. The Drake/Harley was called a “popper” because it vibrated so much. These engines produced close to 100 horsepower, and that was way back in the 1940s. 100 horsepower. Water cooled. Harley, how could you have ignored this back then?
The Estrella Warbird Museum also has a few interesting military motorcycles, including a World War II US Army WL Harley, an M20 BSA single (used by the British in World War II), and real oddity…a 98cc World War II Welbike used by British paratroopers.
For me, a big part of the Estrella Warbirds Museum was its location. I love the Paso Robles area. Getting there is easy. If you’re coming from the North, pick up the El Camino Real (Highway 101) south. If you’re coming from the south, it’s the 101 north. Take California State Route 46 east, Airport Road north, and watch for the signs.
The best kept secrets in this area? The obvious ones are not secrets at all: The riding in and around San Luis Obispo County is awesome. Paso Robles is a wine producing region, and there are plenty of vineyards. You can ride west on State Route 46 to get to the Pacific Coast Highway, one of the premier motorcycle roads in the world (it intersects the PCH near Cambria and Hearst Castle; both are worthy destinations). For a world-class dinner, ride just a few miles south to McPhee’s Grill in Templeton (make reservations, though…you won’t get in without a reservation). There are great missions all along the 101 attesting to the region’s early Spanish influence (they followed the El Camino Real in developing the missions, you know), including the nearby San Luis Obispo and San Miguel Missions. Paso Robles is a California destination, and the riding is good year round. If you’re going in the winter months, dress accordingly. If you’re riding in the summer, stay hydrated.
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