The new National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington represents our nation's highest ideals
What you'll hear instead are words like duty, sacrifice and commitment.
The museum, which is throwing a big celebration Saturday ahead of opening to the public Tuesday, represents those ideals above all others — they are what the curators want visitors to take with them when they leave, along with the stories of some of the 3,528 Medal of Honor recipients.
Located at 1861 AT&T Way in Arlington, tucked between Choctaw Stadium and the Arlington Museum of Art, the National Medal of Honor Museum offers a poignant reminder of the promises our military men and women make to our nation and to each other.
The very structure of the museum is symbolic of this. The massive steel block that houses the exhibits sits atop five pillars, one each for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. The pillars represent the weight that service members bear — what Marine Corps Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter calls 'the beautiful burden.' A pillar of light shining from the atop the museum signifies the U.S. Space Force, our newest branch.
Outside is a rotunda that will be open to visitors 24 hours a day. Inside on the ground floor is a ring of honor with the names of all the recipients going back to the first soldiers to receive the Medal of Honor, in 1863 during the Civil War.
Upstairs are approximately 200 exhibits, which will rotate in the years to come, highlighting recipients' stories. There you'll find things like Sgt. Alvin York's pistol and Bible from World War I. There is a jacket, guitar and other personal effects that belonged to Texan Audie Murphy, one of the most decorated soldiers in World War II.
A Bell UH-1 Iroquois 'Huey' medevac helicopter, modeled after the one flown by Army recipient Patrick Brady in Vietnam, dominates one corner of the museum. Not far from it are mementos from men who fought more recently in places like Afghanistan and Iraq during the Global War on Terror. In one case is Army recipient Clinton Romesha's high school FFA jacket, a reminder of the humanity behind the medal.
Another case houses uniforms belonging to retired Navy SEAL Britt Slabinski, including the bullet-torn uniform trousers he wore the day his actions in Afghanistan earned him the Medal of Honor.
In March 2002, Slabinski led a team up Takur Ghar, a 10,000-foot mountain ridge in eastern Afghanistan, to conduct reconnaissance. In the early morning darkness, a rocket-propelled grenade struck their helicopter. The impact ejected Navy Petty Officer Neil Roberts into the snow below and forced the copter down. Outmatched by the enemy's numbers and under heavy fire, Slabinski ordered another helicopter and took his team back up Takur Ghar to help Roberts.
While seven Americans died that day, including Roberts, Slabinski showed incredible fortitude in leading the attack and stabilizing casualties while awaiting evacuation.
Fear is an emotion, and it's only overcome by choice. In Slabinski's case, he made the choices he did after reciting to himself the Scout Oath, which begins 'on my honor, I will do my best to do my duty.'
Slabinski, who attained Eagle Scout at age 14, told the Star-Telegram in an interview that those words guided his decision to go back for Roberts despite the dangers to him and his men.
'They were put in a very complicated situation,' Slabinski said of the recipients honored in the museum, himself included. 'First they were volunteers, then they were put in a situation, a nearly impossible spot to make decisions in, and they had to make decisions, and they made those decisions in that moment based on a couple of things: first, they had made a promise to the people to their left and right and to those behind them that I'm going to do my best in this situation to make it right no matter what.
'You had this human at a friction point who decided I'm going to do something about this,' he said.
One of the most unique exhibits in the museum gives you the chance to 'talk' with a Medal of Honor recipient in a virtual reality setting. Thanks to hundreds of hours of interview footage, visitors can sit down and ask questions of two recipients and learn the details of their lives and combat actions.
Slabinski hopes experiences like that will change the ways visitors interact with others and with the world around them. He also hopes that, instead of glorifying combat, the museum will provide a stark reminder that war is, in fact, hell.
'I talk a lot in lectures about this: Could we possibly as a human race evolve beyond this need to have this kinetic reaction with each other?' Slabinski said. 'Could we, in some dream world, make a Medal of Honor recipient an endangered species? Could we somehow not have the need, like a caveman, to take your club to the next cave and bash someone over the head to get fire? Is there another way that we could communicate with each other? Very lofty idea, right?'
Slabinski, who is part of the museum's board of directors, said Arlington was chosen as the home for the National Medal of Honor Museum because it's perfectly situated in the middle of the country, near a major airport, and it's already an established destination. It's also in Texas, and as Slabinski put it, 'you're not going to get any more patriotic than Texas.'
Prior to the public opening on March 25, the museum is hosting the Mission to Inspire Spectacular on Saturday, March 22. This free event outside Choctaw Stadium will feature food, music, fireworks, a drone show and a video tribute to Medal of Honor recipients.
That will be preceded by an invitation-only ribbon-cutting ceremony expected to be attended by past and present military and government leaders.
Beginning March 25, the National Medal of Honor Museum will be open daily from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Tickets start at $30 for ages 13 to 64; adding a virtual reality experience starts at $40, and VIP guided tours are from $60. Boeing is sponsoring the tickets of all U.S. veterans with valid ID who visit the museum March 25 to 28.
The museum is also spearheading plans for a Medal of Honor monument that will be installed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., likely near the Lincoln Memorial. The museum foundation is responsible for raising money for the project, with no use of federal funding.
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Broken altimeter, ignored warnings: Hearings reveal what went wrong in DC crash that killed 67
Over three days of sometimes contentious hearings this week, the National Transportation Safety Board interrogated Federal Aviation Administration and Army officials about a list of things that went wrong and contributed to a Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger jet colliding over Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. The biggest revelations: The helicopter's altimeter gauge was broken, and controllers warned the FAA years earlier about the dangers that helicopters presented. At one point NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy scolded the FAA for not addressing safety concerns. 'Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead! How do you explain that? Our bureaucratic process?' she said. 'Fix it. Do better.' Victims of the January crash included a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches and four union steamfitters from the Washington area. Here is a look at the major takeaways from the hearings about the collision, which alarmed travelers before a string of other crashes and close calls this year added to their worries about flying: The helicopter was flying at 278 feet (85 meters) — well above the 200-foot (61-meter) ceiling on that route — when it collided with the airliner. But investigators said the pilots might not have realized that because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder. The NTSB subsequently found similar discrepancies in the altimeters of three other helicopters from the same unit. An expert with Sikorsky, which makes the Black Hawks, said the one that crashed was an older model that lacked the air data computers that make for more accurate altitude readings in newer versions. Army Chief Warrant Officer Kylene Lewis told the board that an 80- to 100-foot (24- to 30-meter) discrepancy between the different altimeters on a helicopter would not be alarming, because at lower altitudes she would be relying more on the radar altimeter than the barometric altimeter. Plus Army pilots strive to stay within 100 feet (30 meters) of target altitude on flights, so they could still do that even with their altimeters that far off. But Rick Dressler of medevac operator Metro Aviation told the NTSB that imprecision would not fly with his helicopters. When a helicopter route like the one the Black Hawk was flying that night includes an altitude limit, Dressler said, his pilots consider that a hard ceiling. Both tried to deflect responsibility for the crash, but the testimony highlighted plenty of things that might have been done differently. The NTSB's final report will be done next year, but there likely will not be one single cause identified for the crash. 'I think it was a week of reckoning for the FAA and the U.S. Army in this accident,' aviation safety consultant and former crash investigator Jeff Guzzetti said. Army officials said the greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Ronald Reagan International Airport with separation distances as small as 75 feet (23 meters) between helicopters and planes when planes are landing on a certain runway at Reagan. 'The fact that we have less than 500-foot separation is a concern for me,' said Scott Rosengren, chief engineer in the office that manages the Army's utility helicopters. Army Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vechten said he was surprised the air traffic controller let the helicopter proceed while the airliner was circling to land at Reagan's secondary runway, which is used when traffic for the main runway stacks up and accounts for about 5% of flights. Van Vechten said he was never allowed to fly under a landing plane as the Black Hawk did, but only a handful of the hundreds of times he flew that route involved planes landing on that runway. Other pilots in the unit told crash investigators it was routine to be directed to fly under landing planes, and they believed that was safe if they stuck to the approved route. Frank McIntosh, the head of the FAA's air traffic control organization, said he thinks controllers at Reagan 'were really dependent upon the use of visual separation' to keep traffic moving through the busy airspace. The NTSB said controllers repeatedly said they would just 'make it work.' They sometimes used 'squeeze plays' to land planes with minimal separation. On the night of the crash, a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. Testimony at the hearing raised serious questions about how well the crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot. The controller acknowledged in an interview that the plane's pilots were never warned when the helicopter was on a collision path, but controllers did not think telling the plane would have made a difference at that point. The plane was descending to land and tried to pull up at the last second after getting a warning in the cockpit, but it was too late. An FAA working group tried to get a warning added to helicopter charts back in 2022 urging pilots to use caution whenever the secondary runway was in use, but the agency refused. The working group said 'helicopter operations are occurring in a proximity that has triggered safety events. These events have been trending in the wrong direction and increasing year over year.' Separately, a different group at the airport discussed moving the helicopter route, but those discussions did not go anywhere. And a manager at a regional radar facility in the area urged the FAA in writing to reduce the number of planes taking off and landing at Reagan because of safety concerns. The NTSB has also said the FAA failed to recognize a troubling history of 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the collision, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said 'every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that.' But after the accident, the FAA transferred managers out of the airport instead of acknowledging that they had been warned. 'What you did is you transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA in the tower was saying there was a problem,' Homendy said. 'But you guys are pointing out, 'Welp, our bureaucratic process. Somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium.''
San Francisco Chronicle
5 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Broken altimeter, ignored warnings: Hearings reveal what went wrong in DC crash that killed 67
Over three days of sometimes contentious hearings this week, the National Transportation Safety Board interrogated Federal Aviation Administration and Army officials about a list of things that went wrong and contributed to a Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger jet colliding over Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. The biggest revelations: The helicopter's altimeter gauge was broken, and controllers warned the FAA years earlier about the dangers that helicopters presented. At one point NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy scolded the FAA for not addressing safety concerns. 'Are you kidding me? Sixty-seven people are dead! How do you explain that? Our bureaucratic process?' she said. 'Fix it. Do better.' Victims of the January crash included a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches and four union steamfitters from the Washington area. Here is a look at the major takeaways from the hearings about the collision, which alarmed travelers before a string of other crashes and close calls this year added to their worries about flying: The helicopter's altimeter was wrong The helicopter was flying at 278 feet (85 meters) — well above the 200-foot (61-meter) ceiling on that route — when it collided with the airliner. But investigators said the pilots might not have realized that because the barometric altimeter they were relying on was reading 80 to 100 feet (24 to 30 meters) lower than the altitude registered by the flight data recorder. The NTSB subsequently found similar discrepancies in the altimeters of three other helicopters from the same unit. An expert with Sikorsky, which makes the Black Hawks, said the one that crashed was an older model that lacked the air data computers that make for more accurate altitude readings in newer versions. Army Chief Warrant Officer Kylene Lewis told the board that an 80- to 100-foot (24- to 30-meter) discrepancy between the different altimeters on a helicopter would not be alarming, because at lower altitudes she would be relying more on the radar altimeter than the barometric altimeter. Plus Army pilots strive to stay within 100 feet (30 meters) of target altitude on flights, so they could still do that even with their altimeters that far off. But Rick Dressler of medevac operator Metro Aviation told the NTSB that imprecision would not fly with his helicopters. When a helicopter route like the one the Black Hawk was flying that night includes an altitude limit, Dressler said, his pilots consider that a hard ceiling. FAA and Army defend actions, shift blame Both tried to deflect responsibility for the crash, but the testimony highlighted plenty of things that might have been done differently. The NTSB's final report will be done next year, but there likely will not be one single cause identified for the crash. 'I think it was a week of reckoning for the FAA and the U.S. Army in this accident,' aviation safety consultant and former crash investigator Jeff Guzzetti said. Army officials said the greater concern is that the FAA approved routes around Ronald Reagan International Airport with separation distances as small as 75 feet (23 meters) between helicopters and planes when planes are landing on a certain runway at Reagan. 'The fact that we have less than 500-foot separation is a concern for me,' said Scott Rosengren, chief engineer in the office that manages the Army's utility helicopters. Army Chief Warrant Officer David Van Vechten said he was surprised the air traffic controller let the helicopter proceed while the airliner was circling to land at Reagan's secondary runway, which is used when traffic for the main runway stacks up and accounts for about 5% of flights. Van Vechten said he was never allowed to fly under a landing plane as the Black Hawk did, but only a handful of the hundreds of times he flew that route involved planes landing on that runway. Other pilots in the unit told crash investigators it was routine to be directed to fly under landing planes, and they believed that was safe if they stuck to the approved route. Frank McIntosh, the head of the FAA's air traffic control organization, said he thinks controllers at Reagan 'were really dependent upon the use of visual separation' to keep traffic moving through the busy airspace. The NTSB said controllers repeatedly said they would just 'make it work.' They sometimes used 'squeeze plays' to land planes with minimal separation. On the night of the crash, a controller twice asked the helicopter pilots whether they had the jet in sight, and the pilots said they did and asked for visual separation approval so they could use their own eyes to maintain distance. Testimony at the hearing raised serious questions about how well the crew could spot the plane while wearing night vision goggles and whether the pilots were even looking in the right spot. The controller acknowledged in an interview that the plane's pilots were never warned when the helicopter was on a collision path, but controllers did not think telling the plane would have made a difference at that point. The plane was descending to land and tried to pull up at the last second after getting a warning in the cockpit, but it was too late. FAA was warned about the dangers of helicopter traffic in D.C. An FAA working group tried to get a warning added to helicopter charts back in 2022 urging pilots to use caution whenever the secondary runway was in use, but the agency refused. The working group said 'helicopter operations are occurring in a proximity that has triggered safety events. These events have been trending in the wrong direction and increasing year over year.' Separately, a different group at the airport discussed moving the helicopter route, but those discussions did not go anywhere. And a manager at a regional radar facility in the area urged the FAA in writing to reduce the number of planes taking off and landing at Reagan because of safety concerns. The NTSB has also said the FAA failed to recognize a troubling history of 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the collision, NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said 'every sign was there that there was a safety risk and the tower was telling you that.' But after the accident, the FAA transferred managers out of the airport instead of acknowledging that they had been warned. 'What you did is you transferred people out instead of taking ownership over the fact that everybody in FAA in the tower was saying there was a problem,' Homendy said. 'But you guys are pointing out, 'Welp, our bureaucratic process. Somebody should have brought it up at some other symposium.''
8 hours ago
Deadly DC plane crash was years in the making, air traffic manager tells NTSB
The deadly mid-air collision at Reagan Airport in January was years in the making, the operations manager of the DCA air traffic control tower on the night of the accident told the National Transportation Safety Board on Friday. "I don't think this accident occurred that night," Clark Allen, the operations manager, said at the investigative hearing. "I think it happened years before we've talked about, you know, resources, whether they were available or unavailable at certain time frames, folks being listened to or not being listened to at certain times. This was not that evening. It was a combination over many years that I think that built up to that evening." The NTSB concluded three days of hearings late Friday, during which the agency's investigators questioned officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Army, American Airlines regional subsidiary PSA Airlines and other parties over January's mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people. It was the nation's first major commercial airline crash since 2009. During the hearings, the NTSB was told that the Army helicopter never heard the command from the air traffic controller to "pass behind the CRJ" as the transmission was stepped on. It was also revealed that the plane's pilots were not warned by the controller that there was a helicopter nearby or cleared to fly near the helicopter. The NTSB Chairwoman also called out the FAA for not sharing a full list of who was working in the control tower the night of the crash until July 6, months after the accident. Pilots likely didn't know how high they were The NTSB's investigation found discrepancies in the altitude data shown on radio and barometric altimeters on Army helicopters after conducting test flights following January's accident. It is likely that the helicopter crew did not know their true altitude due to notoriously faulty altimeters inside this series of Black Hawks, according to the investigation. At their closest points, helicopters and planes flew within 75 feet of each other near DCA, an astonishingly close number. During the hearings, the NTSB was told Army Black Hawks can often have wrong readings and a margin of error of +-200 feet. "I am concerned there is a possibility that what the crew saw was very different than what the true altitude was. We did testing in May that shows concerns with the altimeters, the barometric altimeters on the 60 Lima. So we are concerned, and it's something we have to continue to investigate how significant is 100 feet in this circumstance," Homendy told reporters on Wednesday. Army officials told the NTSB investigators that they plan to inform other military aviation officials of the altitude discrepancy by September, but NTSB board member Todd Inman criticized this for a lack of urgency. The Army officials said they are also addressing it by mentioning it in the public testimony. "I hope every Army aviator is not having to watch the livestream to figure out if there's a discrepancy in their altitudes and planes that are flying around," Inman said. Disconnect between DCA controllers and FAA leadership NTSB investigators and board members noted that there seems to be a "disconnect" between the information they are getting from the FAA officials versus what the employees have shared with them during the interviews. "What we're trying to understand is where the disconnect is because what we have is for example, reports from controllers today that are saying there were 10-15 loss of separation events since the accident," Homendy said. Tension in the tower Chair Homendy noted air traffic controllers crying during interviews with investigators following the crash, adding the controller whose voice is heard talking to the doomed aircraft has not returned to work. Tensions have been so high in the tower following the crash, a shouting match turned into a fist fight this spring, ending with a controller being arrested. Some employees say they feared getting transferred or fired if concerns were brought up to their superiors. "I hundred percent agree with you. There definitely seems to be some barrier in communication where the people that impacts it the most are not hearing the things that the FAA is moving forward on and that needs to be addressed. I agree," said Franklin McIntosh, acting chief operating officer of the Air Traffic Organization -- the operation arm of the FAA. "I wholeheartedly agree and I will commit to you and everyone on the board in the panel that I will start working this immediately to make sure whatever those barriers are occurring, that it stops," McIntosh said. "Clearly someone in the facility doesn't feel like they're getting the help that they should be getting and quite honestly if that word's not getting down, then we need to do a better job in breaking through whatever that barrier is." The FAA has pushed back on claims of employees being removed or transferred out of the tower as a result of the collision. "So we didn't remove anybody as a result of an accident," said Nick Fuller, acting deputy chief operating officer with the Air Traffic Organization. Homendy challenged that assertion saying, "I think many would disagree, since it was done pretty immediately. Also the NTSB had to weigh in several times to get people help in the tower." NTSB investigators also pressed FAA officials over controllers who manage DCA airspace feeling pressured to "make it work" due to the large volume of aircraft in the airspace near the airport. "We have many non-standard tools that we use in order to be able to bring a significant amount of airplanes into DCA, " said Bryan Lehman, air traffic manager at the Potomac Terminal Radar Approach Control, which manages air traffic control in the region, while also adding that they do take "pride in it," but that it gets too much after a certain point. Lehman also testified at the hearing that controllers sent a memo to their superiors in 2023 requesting a lower arrival rate for airplanes, but the concerns were dismissed and Congress approved more flights for DCA. ADSB policy for Army Despite calls from lawmakers and the NTSB for mandated Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADSB) -- technology that makes the aircraft more visible to the tower, other aircraft and the public -- on all aircraft, including military aircraft, it remains a point of hesitation for the Army. All aircraft flying over 18,000 feet are required to have ADSB but certain aircraft, including military aircraft, are exempt from transmitting ADSB location when flying for security reasons. "I'm pretty sure most people are aware of the fact that it's inherently open source," Army Lt. Col. Paul Flanigen told the hearing panel on Friday. "It has some spoofing vulnerabilities which make it non-conducive for those sensitive missions, which not just the army, but all of DOD has to operate on." As previously reported by ABC News, the helicopter involved in the accident was not transmitting ADSB out, meaning it wasn't transmitting its location for other aircraft nearby to see where it was. A Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) -- which detects other aircraft in close proximity -- was also not installed in the helicopter, according to the investigation. The NTSB made a recommendation nearly two decades ago asking the FAA to require ADSB on all aircraft but it was not implemented. The point was brought up again during the hearings. "Does the FAA right now support requiring any newly manufactured aircraft registered in the U.S. be equipped with ADSB in?" Homendy asked. McIntosh said yes and showed support towards requiring aircraft to be equipped with ADSB out as well. Experts have said it's more effective when an aircraft is equipped with both ADSB in and out so they can transmit their location and also receive the location of other aircraft in its near proximity. A bill in Congress titled the "Rotor Act" was introduced earlier this week by Sen. Ted Cruz, which would require all aircraft, including military aircraft, to transmit ADSB location when flying. Notably, the newly appointed FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were present at the news conference and showed their support towards the legislation. The NTSB's investigation into the cause of the accident continues and a final report is expected by January 2026. "We do this to improve safety certainly but we all do this with each of you in mind and your loved ones that were lost tragically with you in mind not just on the CRJ but also PAT 25 so we will continue on and hope to complete this investigation within a year," Homendy said in her closing remarks on Friday.
