CADDO MILLS — Lt. Col. Harold “Red” Smith had a fascination with drones.
The 32-year career-long U.S. Air Force veteran always wanted to own a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, one that he had been researching for the last several years of his life. The Predator has been used by the nation’s armed forces and the CIA, and can achieve a speed of up to 217 km per hour and could be equipped with Hellfire missiles.
Smith created a collection so expansive, he was ready to create a museum full of them. But Smith never got to see the museum through. He died in a car accident in 2017. He was 86.
“We decided to put all this together because it was his dream,” said Doug Smith, his eldest son. “We just didn’t want it to go away.”
In a small, off-road facility at the Caddo Mills Municipal Airport, his children, Doug, Paula Field and grandson Marshall Smith, and their family members who volunteer when they can — wanted their veteran’s legacy to live on. They created the local drone collection in Caddo Mills, the Aviation Unmanned Vehicle Museum. Patrons drive up on the gravel road to the museum and can see the large display with 25 drones, thousands of parts and deep history in the U.S. military.
The 22,500-square-foot building near the Caddo Mills airport was owned by the family before Smith’s death, a property Red Smith used to store parts and drones from his own business. The museum now has more than 50 working drones, many restored by Smith or his family after his death. Another 20 are in the restoration process.
Now converted into a showroom open to the public, the family believes it’s the only U.S. military drone museum in the country, although the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has a Predator drone on display.
His children finally got the Predator in April, among the dozens of other drones the family has collected. It took two full years to get Smith’s collection under one roof, because of how large the parts were and how they were scattered in various locations, said Field. By the end of 2019, everything was on display. A grand opening was planned for May 2020, but the family postponed due to the pandemic. It finally opened on May 16, 2021.
Smith served more than 30 years in the U.S. Air Force. They called him “Red” for his red hair.
“He was a determined person,” Doug said. Doug worked in a variety of Smith’s businesses, including a drone manufacturing business, for 30 years.
The kids remember their father reading six newspapers a day – The Dallas Morning News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Dallas Business Journal and many aviation magazines from what they remember. He never drank or smoked. He read books all the time and had a fascination with the industry.
His uncrewed aerial vehicle collection, most of which the family is still unsure how he accumulated, features early government technology all the way up to what’s been used by armed forces in recent years. The family thinks Smith may have traded for some of the drones.
Understanding drones and drone warfare takes a history lesson because these capabilities have been around for centuries, said Paul Lushenko, deputy director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. He said the first form of a drone, or an unmanned aerial vehicle, could be considered a balloon.
In February, the U.S. military shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the Carolina coast. Shortly after, a senior U.S. defense official said there were similar balloons seen near Texas and Florida during the Trump administration.
“The intended benefit of a drone is to surgically remove a target, while protecting one’s own forces and mitigating minimizing reducing civilian casualties,” Lushenko said.
He believes drones have done a “historically remarkable job” of reducing civilian casualties on the battlefield.
“There’s a lot of outstanding questions surrounding unmanned aerial vehicles, these systems in Europe especially,” he said. “It’ll be important for young scholars to continue to contend with going forward.”
Non-military drones can be used for transporting medical equipment, assessing disaster areas, fighting wildfires and more, according to The Smithsonian Museum.
Norma Jeane Dougherty, before she was a famous celebrity known as Marilyn Monroe, is featured in the museum for her work with the company called Radioplane, founded by a British character actor Reginald Denny, another figure highlighted in the museum. Monroe was an assembly worker that worked 10 hours a day for $20 a week in a World War II defense plant, according to The New York Times.
Smith became fascinated by drones because of his own military service working with unmanned aerial devices. Smith enlisted in the Iowa Air National Guard in Oct. 1947 and later joined active duty in the U.S. Air Force. Smith served in many roles during his years of service, but had a pivotal assignment in Jan. 1964 when he was selected as a Reconnaissance Project Officer for Lockheed U-2′s and emerging drones.
Smith worked on drones at Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam during the 1968 Vietnamese New Year. He spent four months in Vietnam to correct navigational issues with the drones.
The collection features:
•A Beechcraft AQM-37A Jayhawk, first flown in 1961. The one at the museum has a Harley Davidson engine on it. Smith’s family isn’t quite sure the story on how their father acquired it, but they know the drone was made to simulate incoming missiles.
•There’s a QH-50 Gyrodyne, the first drone helicopter to enter operational service. It has a Peanuts character, Lucy, on the side of it. The drone was used in Vietnam for bomb damage assessment, trying to locate targets and check and see if efficiency was on track, said Marshall.
•And of course, the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, still being used to this day by the U.S. military. It’s remotely piloted and has primary functions of armed reconnaissance, airborne surveillance and target acquisition. The Predator was primarily used by the U.S. Air Force and CIA, and it carries multiple cameras and sensors.
Some of the drones were seen as “black sheep” in aviation, often placing pressures on pilot jobs that they could one day replace, Doug said.
But to keep the museum up and moving, the family needs donations and volunteers. The Aviation Unmanned Vehicle Museum is a 501 (C)(3) nonprofit that runs off donations. The museum is open to the public for tours by appointment. The property is currently for sale, Field said, and the family wants a location closer to the cities and not far away from Dallas.
His children and grandchildren are hoping that the museum will stay in the family for generations to come.
“I think if my father were still here, the message that he would want people to understand is that the drone technology, saves lives, it saves our military’s lives,” Field said.
The Aviation Unmanned Vehicle Museum is located at 4246 N FM1565, Caddo Mills, TX 75135. Adult admission is $12, children are $6, military and senior citizens are $6. Private tours are available for $40 per person.
©2023 The Dallas Morning News. Visit dallasnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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