National Museum of the United States Air Force

The National Museum of the United States Air Force is the official museum of the United States Air Force and the world's oldest and largest museum of military aviation . It is on the outskirts of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton , Ohio, USA.

Around 300 aircraft are exhibited on around 60,000 m² of covered area and an outdoor area , along with rockets, weapons, engines and the like. In 2005, the collection comprised around 65,000 objects. 1.2 million people visit the exhibition every year. Admission is free.

Organizationally, the museum belongs to the Air Force Materiel Command of the US Air Forces and is partly financed by state funds and partly by the Air Force Museum Foundation (AFMF).

The museum also includes the National Aviation Hall of Fame , which portrays and honors pioneers in US aviation. Since it was founded in 1962 until July 2006, 186 military pilots were accepted into this hall of fame.

history

Beginnings

Martin B-10 at the USAF Museum

In October 1922, the aviation unit of the US Army Signal Corps began preparations for a museum. The Engineering Division Museum opened in 1923 on McCook Field , north of Dayton, Ohio . In 1924 there were 62 aircraft, a helicopter and 139 engines. In its first years the museum served mainly technical rather than historical information; it was intended to serve as a visual display for technicians and designers, which is why many of the exhibits were exhibited unclad or dismantled. Outdated models were not preserved, but destroyed.

move

When McCook Field became too small for flight operations in 1927, the Army Air Service moved to Wright Field, which was northeast of Dayton and later became Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The museum collection was initially stored. On September 30, 1931, the museum was renamed the Army Aeronautical Museum and reopened to the public in July 1932. However, only a single aircraft from the old inventory was in the new exhibition (a Nieuport 27 ), all the rest had in the meantime either been destroyed or passed on to other facilities. In the first four years after reopening, the museum had an average of 12,000 visitors a year. The exhibition area had tripled by 1935.

At the beginning of World War II , the Army Aeronautical Museum closed to the public. The stored collection had to move several times at the airfield, with many exhibits being damaged.

New beginning after the Second World War

After the Second World War, the facility now called the Army Technical Museum began collecting equipment from the conflict that had just ended. This included captured technology such as the German Junkers Ju 88 and Messerschmitt Me 262 aircraft , albeit with a delay of several years because the USAAF first examined them in detail.

After the establishment of the new, independent United States Air Force , the museum was named Air Force Technical Museum on January 2, 1948 . It wasn't until 1955 that the museum reopened to the public, this time in a former engine maintenance hall on Patterson Field, just a few hundred meters from the old location. The number of visitors rose to 600,000 in 1969, and by the early 1960s a move seemed unavoidable due to lack of space. A foundation established in November 1960 raised additional funds for a planned new building.

New building at the current location

One of the most recent additions: Lockheed C-141 Hanoi Taxi above the USAF Museum

On September 3, 1971, President Richard Nixon opened the first new building of the museum, which was now called the United States Air Force Museum . The six million US dollar and almost 20,000 m² building is right next to the former runway 05/23 of old Wright Field. One of the oldest original exhibits is a Louis Blériot monoplane from 1911. In April 1988, a second 15,000 m² hall for modern aviation was added, where the Lockheed YF-22 , Northrop Tacit Blue and Bird of Prey can now be seen are. A third hall has been showing equipment on the subject of Cold War on 18,500 m² since 2003 , including cruise missiles , Northrop B-2 and Mikojan-Gurevich MiG-29 . Since 2004, objects from the field of rockets and space travel such as ICBMs , satellites and spaceships have been housed in a silo-like rotunda .

About one and a half kilometers from the main complex, experimental aircraft and former presidential aircraft ( Air Force One ) are on display, including the only surviving North American XB-70 and Lockheed YF-12 as well as the VC-137C with the registration number 62-6000, which are all presidents of John F. Kennedy until Bill Clinton served. A fourth hall is planned for these aircraft in the main building so that all collections can be displayed centrally.

In October 2004, the museum was given its current name, National Museum of the United States Air Force , to underline the national importance of this facility.

In addition to the actual exhibition, the USAF Museum has an IMAX cinema with 500 seats, a café and a museum shop. The museum also maintains an extensive archive of photos and other documents, as well as a restoration department.

Exhibits

The museum is divided into individual exhibitions that show airplanes in their historical context and depict the development of military aviation.

Air Force One

- SAM 26000, known as JFK's plane, was there in Dallas

The early years 1901 to 1941

1901 to 1917

Bleriot monoplane

Wright brothers wind tunnel from 1901
Wright Military Flyer (1909), the first aircraft purchased by the US Army Signal Corps
Curtiss Model D (1911), the second aircraft purchased by the US Army Signal Corps
Blériot monoplane