Dec 22, 2006 11:23 am US/Eastern
USS Intrepid's Concorde Finds Temporary Home
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
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A British Airways Concorde jetliner is moved by barge through New York Harbor in 2003, on its way to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. The Concorde is now on temporary display at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn while the Intreipid's Hudson River dock i
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The USS Intrepid dominated the west side of Manhattan for more than two decades. It is presently in New Jersey undergoing repairs while its Hudson River dock is being refurbished.
Gregg A. Geller/CBS
A Concorde jetliner, a featured attraction at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, is under way to a ttemporary new home in Brooklyn.
The sleek white supersonic aircraft was moved by barge Friday to historic Floyd Bennett Field, according to Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Charles Baxter. During an 18-month rebuilding of the Intrepid's Hudson River pier, the plane will remain open to visitors at the Aviator Sports and Recreation site, according to Intrepid museum officials.
The towing process was to end at the field's seaplane ramp in Jamaica Bay, said museum spokeswoman Suzanne Halpin. From there it was to be lifted by crane onto a runway and towed nearly a mile, on its own wheels, to the new location.
The onetime Mach 2 flier is the last major item to vacate Pier 86, where the historic aircraft carrier USS Intrepid has been docked since it became a floating museum in 1982. The Intrepid was moved Dec. 6 to a Bayonne, N.J., shipyard for an extensive overhaul. It was joined last week by USS Growler, a 1960s-vintage missile submarine.
Museum officials said the renovation of the 64-year-old World War II carrier and the rebuilding of the Hudson River dock should take 18 months to two years.
The 203-foot supersonic British Airways jet is known as Alpha Delta. It was retired in October 2003, still holding the transatlantic speed record of 2 hours, 53 minutes, set in 1996.
Although British Airways and the Intrepid originally planned to relocate the Concorde in Manhattan, prospective sites proved unsatisfactory.
"Both Intrepid and British Airways wanted to keep Concorde on public display," said airline spokesman John Lampl. "Intrepid and British Airways came to an agreement on Floyd Bennett Field. We're very pleased that tourists and visitors will be able to see it."
The Brooklyn airfield has a notable history of its own. Named for a pilot who had flown Adm. Richard E. Byrd, a polar explorer, over the North Pole in 1926, it opened in 1931 as New York City's municipal airport.
It was used by such aviation pioneers as Wiley Post, Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes. In 1938, Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan took off from the field on a planned flight to California and wound up in Ireland. Despite many skeptics, he claimed to have made a navigational error.
Now, the field is used primarily by police and fire helicopters, advertising blimps and aviation exhibitions.
The Concorde, the world's only supersonic transport, began flying commercially in 1969 but never turned a profit for the joint British-French company that designed and built it. Its financial problems worsened after a French Concorde crashed near Paris in 2000, killing 109 people, and the planes were retired from service in 2003.
Another British Airways plane is in a Seattle air museum, and an Air France version is displayed at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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