COMMEMORATIVE AIR FORCE MUSEUM
That’s All Brother is the historic aircraft that led the main airborne invasion of Normandy during World War II and is currently restored and housed at the Commemorative Air Force Central Texas Wing in San Marcos, located at 1841 Airport Drive in Building 2249. For those interested in experiencing what it’s like to fly that historic plane, That’s All Brother Jr. is now available at the museum for flight simulations, and it’s a lot of fun.
The aircraft used to create That’s All Brother Jr. was found in a Florida junkyard and restored. The simulator was originally created by Joe Enzminger, the CAF Museum of San Marcos wing leader, with the help of Eric Hagen, who did the very extensive wiring needed to make it all come together.
“Enzminger … at one time, worked in a simulator company, but he’s a pilot and he flies That’s All Brother,” Hagen said. “When he got the idea of making this a simulator, it was like, ‘I want to make this as accurate as we can;’ Because it’s for training, of course, but also for just the experience.”
That’s All Brother Jr. uses the front end of a similar type of plane to its fullsized predecessor, and all the parts of that plane are wired from the original hardware to computers that allow the flight simulation to create its visual magic. The front of the plane is surrounded by a 270 degree curved screen, but when travelling, museum volunteers only take the aircraft and attach screens right to the window.
“There’s six computers, small computers in here that then talk to the main computer. This is the one running all the videos and also the flight simulator software,” Hagen said. “We can fly it out anywhere that the X-plane software has, which is almost anywhere in the world.”
The museum hopes the simulator will get people interested in becoming pilots. CAF Museum volunteers recently took That’s All Brother Jr. to its Dallas headquarters for an Aviation Education festival.
“It’s to get kids in and learn about aviation and things like that,” Hagen said. “I think people are going, ‘Hey, kids really like simulators. Let’s get them flying.’ [We’re trying to] keep their interest. So I had 600 kids in about three days on here.”
Learn more about That’s All Brother Jr. at this link youtube.com/watch?v=A_ k0eYSgndM.
The museum is open on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The museum is by donation only, and there is a small fee to ride the simulator. There is also an extensive museum on site full of all kinds of WWII wares in addition to the plane collection.
