One question always arises when school kids tour the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach. As they learn about the battle stories and storied missions of wartime pilots, someone will ask:
“Where did they pee?”
What’s often met by an adult’s "shush" is now being answered. Head into the museum’s recently renovated restrooms and check out the exhibit, “When Nature Calls: At 26,000 feet.”
The Pungo museum honors those who built, flew and maintained America’s military aircraft. It contains one of the largest collections of vintage planes in the world, along with an active airstrip for pilot demonstrations of warbirds.
When the museum invested $200,000 in its bathrooms, Executive Director Keegan Chetwynd vowed to do more than upgrade plumbing.
The permanent potty exhibit combines text and photographs to detail the challenges airmen faced during lengthy missions when human relief needs couldn’t be traditionally met.
“When you’re using the bathroom is a key time to learn about how bathrooms were used in these aircraft,” Chetwynd said.
Shutting a stall door and taking a seat on the commode provides educational reading material that the ordinary cell phone scroll can’t match.
“It’s sometimes difficult to find a place in a museum for intensely human reflections,” Chetwynd said. “Where else do these stories go if not right over a urinal?”
As aircraft became more sophisticated in the 1920s and capable of much longer flights, incorporating toilets became an issue. Unlike commercial aircraft, military planes needed all their space to store bombs and supplies.
Today, cabins are at a comfortable temperature thanks to airplane pressurization. Nothing like that existed during World War II when fliers battled the enemy along with frigid temperatures.
“Sometimes they had to peel eight layers of clothing off of them before relieving themselves,” Chetwynd said.
Bomber crews sometimes wore bunny suits, electrically heated blankets made into overalls. Leather jackets covered them. Heavy gloves prevented frostbite.
The B-29 Superfortress, distinguished by its ability to carry out missions exceeding 16 hours, relied on non-flushing chemical toilets similar to today’s Porta-Potties – designed to hold loads of human waste and mask the stench as much as possible.
“It wasn’t really about creature comforts,” said Chetwynd, adding that the first casualty of war is modesty.
Relief tubes were another option, allowing crew members to pee into a funnel attached to a hose that sprayed the urine into the air. Some of the tubes were mounted on the control stick, others under the pilot’s seat. Crew members who worked in the back of the plane brought containers and dispensed them like payload over enemy territory.
In the walls and stalls of the museum’s restrooms, guests can learn about the tradition of “watering the wheels” (yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like). Or read anecdotes such as P-51 pilot Larry Dissette describing what it was like to frantically scrape the yellow ice off his windshield after a relief tube spattered during a mid-air defensive maneuver.
“The big takeaway from this exhibit for us is to look at our future exhibit development and get away from the big-ticket history book items to get to the very relatable aspects of history,” Chetwynd said. “That’s why when you tell people it was eight hours to Berlin, the first thing on their mind might be, ‘How do you pee?’ That puts the war in a really human perspective.”
Research for the exhibit is compiled from The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Vintage Wings of Canada, a nonprofit organization in Quebec, and other historical archives.
For more information, visit the Military Aviation Museum.