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[[underlined]] National Air and Space Museum Facility at Dulles Airport [[/underlined]]

At the Secretary's request, Dr. Challinor outlined the following report which was distributed in advance of the meeting. After discussion the Regents agreed with the conclusions reached and expressed confidence in the project.

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The Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility, perhaps better known as Silver Hill, located in Suitland, Maryland, is the relic of a series of emergency decisions made during the Korean War. At that time there was no National Air and Space Museum or even concrete plans for one; the majority of the Museum's aircraft were stored intact at a former aircraft production plant at Park Ridge, Illinois, subsequently the site of O'Hare International Airport. When the Korean War raised the issue of returning the plant to aircraft production, the U.S. Air Force notified the Smithsonian Institution that it would be required to move the 100-plus large airplanes to another site.

The best available site at that time was a 21-acre unimproved tract in Suitland, Maryland. Despite drawbacks, the site was used to store aircraft which were moved from the Park Ridge facility. Over the years a series of temporary buildings were added, many of standard World War II Quonset-hut style, as well as five larger Butler-type buildings. These have proven inadequate for the storage of historically important air and space craft and other artifacts, as they lacked capabilities for appropriate environmental and security systems.

With the creation of the new National Air and Space Museum, the Garber Facility in 1980 assumed a new and more important role. It became not only the repository of the treasures of our national air and space heritage, but