How the Intrepid Moved a World War II Fighter Plane

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out how a World War II fighter-bomber was squeezed into an exhibition space on the former aircraft carrier Intrepid. We’ll also get details on new census data that show that the population of New York City is growing again.

Credit…Intrepid Museum

“It was like moving a couch into your New York City apartment,” Jessica Williams said, except that the item in question had no pillows or cushions and no pull-out bed to sleep on. And there was no super insisting it would never fit.

Williams, the head curator of the Intrepid Museum, was explaining how dicey it had been to transport a 33-foot fighter-bomber from World War II. The aircraft was not going far, just from the Intrepid’s restoration hangar, on the former aircraft carrier’s flight deck, to the hangar deck two levels below.

New York is a city where impossibly large objects squeeze through impossibly small spaces when moving day comes — somehow, grand pianos are shoehorned into elevators. But size is relative. On a ship like the Intrepid, which is roughly 890 feet long, a few feet shorter than the height of the office tower at 425 Park Avenue, so many spaces seem extra-extra-large.

The Intrepid’s elevator originally had a wide-mouthed opening. The fighter-bomber being moved, a Corsair on loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Fla., would have gone in and out easily, as aircraft did during World War II. “The whole design of this ship was to facilitate the movement of aircraft,” Williams said, “but now it’s a museum, so of course we’ve changed things.”