c/n BA100 (note:- the Smithsonian website claims the c/n is 101) Built 1938 The Baby Albatross was a scaled-down, affordable version of the Senior Albatross and was intended to maintain interest in gliding during the Great Depression. 156 kits were sold between 1938 and 1944 and 12 were still current on the US civil register in September 2013. This is the prototype and was hand-built by Hawley Bowlus and Don Mitchell between 1936 and 1938. It first flew in March 1938 and during subsequent testing it was towed aloft by every available method including by car, aircraft (Piper Cub), pulley, winch, bungee-launch and even by horses. It attended the 1938 US National Glider Contest and came fourth overall. In August 1939 she was sold to Lieutenant Horace E. Tennes, a serving US Navy officer assigned to fighter squadron VF-6. When he was transferred to Hawaii in late 1941 he had the glider dismantled and loaded aboard USS Enterprise for the journey. It is not known whether she was ever reassembled while ‘on location in the Pacific’ and she was sold in 1946 when Tennes began motor-boat racing instead of gliding, a considerable change of pace! She flew again with her new owners but was eventually sold-on in 1955 and then again in 1958 before being donated to the Smithsonian Institute in 1963. Beautifully restored, she is seen on display at the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center as part of the National Air and Space Museum. Washington Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, Virginia