National Museum of the United States Air Force

DougRobertson

As an extension of our EAA AirVenture 2008 trip we next flew N2111Q to see the subject museum. I had seen its predecessor years ago in the 1970s in connection with business trips to Wright-Patterson AFB at Dayton, Ohio. There is no comparison of the former to the latter enlarged museum. We only had less than a full day at the museum, which is insufficient to really properly take it all in.

One thing immediately apparent was my camera's flash range wasn't going to adequately illuminate many dimly lit aircraft and other displays. Some of the inter-connected hangars are really dark and hanging aircraft would be difficult to photograph with a pocket digital camera. So, few photos were taken inside and several more show the outside aircraft displays where some of the data cards have rusted out and are not legible. I did edit the photos to improve them somewhat.

The museum cafeteria has good, inexpensive food. Not to be missed is the IMAX theater which we attended to see the Operation Red Flag ACM Exercises film which was showing convenient to our limited schedule. Would you be surprised to find an F-22 Raptor on display inside like the one that flew at Oshkosh this year? Incredibly, five EMD samples of the F-22 were built at huge cost, and the museum has one of the five.

I have grouped my museum photos arbitrarily under the ICAO abbreviation DAY for Dayton's international airport which if arriving by commercial air would be the closest passenger airport. DAY can be found alphabetically under Airports & Seaports at bottom left column on my Home Page here.

We also made a quick trip south of Dayton to see the Dayton-Wright Brothers MGY airport where there is a small museum. We found it closed on a Monday so I settled for a photo under the scrutiny of Orville and Wilbur whose large mural likeness' grace the museum's outside wall.

GlennE.Chatfield

Hi Doug,

I just came across this post.

As for putting DAY for the Air Force Museum, I am more favorable towards putting FFO in because the AFM is part of the air base, on old Wright Field (which used to be identified as DWF as Daniel Compton had posted). They moved it from Patterson Field in Fairborn in 1971.

I have been to that museum too many times to count. My first trip was as a junior in High School when we moved back to Springfield, OH from Denver, CO where we had lived for 5 years. I visited it a couple more times with my family before graduating high school in 1970. From then on, every time I was home on pass or leave from the Army until Feb 1975 I went to the museum to see what was new.

After leaving the Army and moving to Columbus in March '75, until moving to the Chicago area in Sept 1978, I was at the museum monthly (my in-laws lived 20 min. from it so if we visit them, I visited the museum). Once moving to Illinois it was more difficult to find the time to visit, but we were there usually 2-3 times a year. Since moving to Iowa, with the longer distance, I have made it once a year and a few times twice a year. My last trip was May this year.

It is my favorite museum. One needs more than a day just to see all the planes without running, and another week just to read everything! But they do fabulous restoration work and have some one-of-a-kind machines. I'm really looking forward to seeing the XC-99.

DougRobertson

Glenn,

Thank you for the good info. Your FFO is more accurate than DAY, and I will make the change in due time. Will have to bring up the museum photos under DAY and do individual moves to an added FFO on my Home Page. (I also have some photos taken of and at DAY to be left there).

I certainly wished that we could have spent more time at the museum, but we were limited by a 24 hour car rental, and I didn't pay for the car. I expect most who fly commercial will know DAY is closest airline airport to the museum. I have also been to The USAF Aviation Museum at Warner-Robins AFB, where I have spent far more time and more recent time on past business, and I would put that number two in USAF aviation museums. Both museums have great websites.

FloridaMetal

I have a mix of DWF and FFO I think for my AFM photos. I think Glen corrected me half way through my posting of them. Putting DWF though wasn't totally inaccurate as it used to be an airfield also.

Infact, the last time I was there in October 2006 there was an L bird fly in of about 25 Liason aircraft. Several went up and did some fly bys before coming back in. They were using the grass, I am assuming the paved runway wasn't safe to use because I didn't see anyone depart or arrive on pavement

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/077381.html

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/077386.html

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/077361.html

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/057908.html

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/054611.html

Looks as though I put FFO for all these planes too, weird

The Warner Robbins Museum is very nice too and expanding. I stopped there in January 2007 when I was driving my folks down to Florida from Michigan. Unfortunately it was cloudy and dreary the day I was there, so my outside shots were so-so

Dayton AFM is too dark in some of the sections. The cold war museum is very nice, but again too dark. I have a nice digital SLR and it was too dark for that too - I don't have a fancy flash attachment or tripod though.

One place I would like to return to, although not a formal AFM is the Pima Museum, I figure that was sorta more Doug's neck of the woods - although I know its a long drive from California even to Tucson as it took me a good half of a day or more to get from San Diego to Tucson when I was there in 1999. Unfortunately I was not really into photography as I am now. I just had a film camera and took pictures of a few of the more unusual planes - ie the Super Guppy, the Caravelle and a few others when I was there. That is a place I would like to visit again in the future.

I need to return to the Pensacola Navy Museum again too. I went there in early 2006 before I bought my current camera - was just using a pocket digital then too. I have some pictures posted but they are terrible.

DougRobertson

Thank you Daniel, for the nice L-bird photos. The first Cessna 305A with the choppers cowl art is rather flamboyant, for an unarmed airplane.

I also visited the Pensacola aviation museum, in 1990 as a side trip from Eglin AFB during a HARM program review on an afternoon when they held a USAF-only meeting. On the way we stopped at a Mcdonalds for lunch-I was wearing my Voyager golf shirt and my aviator shades. The elderly clerk at the counter nearly had apoplexy-he said "I'm in the presence of a celebrity!" He thought I was Dick Rutan, the Voyager pilot with Jeana Yeager. I quickly disabused him of the notion and we all had a good laugh. He did say many aviation celebrities did stop there and I believed him-it really made the old man's day, and mine, despite the identity confusion.

Technically, the Pensacola US Naval Aviation Museum is a National Museum part of the Smithsonian complex, as the USN officially does not operate "museums". Our missile displays-outdoors and indoors at NAWS Point Mugu, California NTD are officially know as the "Missile Park" and the "Command History Storage Facility", as each US Navy Command is charged with keeping the history of the Command, which in Point Mugu's case through several reorganization changes goes back to 1946.

I didn't take a camera along on that Florida business trip either, but would also very highly recommend the Pensacola museum-gloss-white epoxied floors and lots of windows showed all restored aircraft exceedingly well for photography, and excellent docents, one of whom told me he learned something from most every group who had either flown the aircraft or had been in Navy squadrons, as I had.

Last time I was anywhere near Pima was in a P2V-5F NEPTUNE on a cross country non-stop to Litchfield Park NAF, now decommissioned, in the 1950s. It is a future trip.

FloridaMetal

I am really surprised you haven't been to Pima. I know Tuscon is a near day's drive from I am assuming California where you are around but yet you been to the AFM, OSH at Pensacola. Pima is nice because a large amount of the aircraft are outside so you don't have to worry about dark museums - especially since weather seems mostly blue skies in Arizona - though mid summer there is much like down here in Florida with the afternoon storms mixed with heat. I was there in August 1999 - hot as hell, but the weather was clear otherwise.

I was also at Pensacola in 1990 - I was just a young kid then with my parents on a Florida trip right after highschool let out up in Michigan. I barely remember anything then and I didn't really take any pictures. I might have a couple still at my parents house from film camera. Back in 1990 I think everything or most of everything was outside. We only spent about an hour there - we had to drive to Tampa - talk about a long drive. I went back in 2006 but with only a pocket digital camera and the shots didn't come out well - I have a few posted here.

GlennE.Chatfield

I really need to get down to Warner Robins to see their stuff. I didn't even know they had a museum until Daniel's photos came up when I profiled a plane I had shots of: an F-80 at a park in Aurora, IL

http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/45-8357.html Then Daniel told me about the museum and I've looked at all his shots from there.

I visited the National Museum of Naval Aviation in September 2003 while visiting my mom in Fairhope, AL (about an hour's drive away). Now that I have a digital camera, I really need to visit "mom" again!

The Air Force Museum has some really dark display areas, but they say that it helps preserve the aircraft, that light deteriorates the paint. Using high ISO and strobes helps greatly.

DougRobertson

In the meantime, take a Virtual Tour of each museum.

For NM of the USAF: www.wpafb.af.mil/museum

For Museum of Aviation at Warner-Robins AFB: www.museumofaviation.org

FloridaMetal

I think I found out about Warner Robbins after seeing some pictures on airliners.net. I had passed by Warner Robbins multiple times while taking I-75. There is a misslile located along I-75 at the exit. I was surprised I never went there until 2007. Of course it is nowhere near as big as the AFM - its got three hangar/museums and several outdoor aircraft. I guess when I was there they were getting ready to build another building to house some more of the outdoor exhibits.

What would be a good thing to do is plane a little trip in the southeast - hit Warner Robbins, the Armament Museum at Eglin AFB in Ft. Walton Beach FL, The Army Aviation Museum in southeast Alabama and the Naval Museum in Pennsacola.

I'm thinking of doing that sometime, getting those museums when I go to either the Pennsacola Air Show or the Tyndall Airshow in Panama City - thats a good 6-8 hour drive for me though.

DougRobertson

I had several visits to the US Army Aviation Museum at Fort Rucker, Alabama in connection with Government business trips in the late 1970s. The museum consisted then of a single large old style brick and high small-paned windows hangar with the largest aircraft a Douglas C-47 Skytrain that had been Gen. Douglas MacArthur's command aircraft. I also recall L Birds and early Army helicopters. Fort Rucker is the US Army's Aviation Training Command and there was continuous helicopter training flights going on, seeming in waves of helos. I would be interested in what the museum is like today.

GlennE.Chatfield

When I visited my mom in 2003 not only did my wife and I go to the Naval Museum in Pensacola, but I had others in sight as we departed Mom's house and headed to visit friends at their bed & breakfast just east of Tallahassee. We visited Hurlburt Field (Ft. Walton Beach), the Air Force Armament Museum at Eglin AFB and as we headed back home our first stop was the Army Aviation Museum. That museum was closed because they had some flooding and were undergoing repairs, but we shot all the outside stuff a block down the road, which was good because lots of that stuff was moved and the XCH-62A was broken up & scrapped since then. (We visited Mom the week of Christmas 2004 and hit the Army Aviation Museum just so we could see the inside, although it was really out of the way). From the closed Army Aviation Museum we headed up to Maxwell AFB for their aviation park. Again I got lucky because their post-9/11 security had closed the area to the public unless you had a sponsor on base or were a Federal Government employee --- I had my FAA ID with me and was let in! (The guard said it was because Feds had security investigations already done). From there we hit Ft. Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division Museum. That was the most places I've ever done in one trip. On the way TO Mom's we came from the NW so we stopped at the Battleship Alabama Memorial and there were planes there to photograph. Took forever to get all those photos sorted out!

FloridaMetal

I never got to the Army Aviation Museum. I used to pass nearby it all the time on Highway 231 on the way to Spring Break in Panama City - however I was always going by it at 5-6am in the morning. I recall seeing signs for it. I also remember some aircraft on poles further down the road near Dothan Alabama. I can't remember what that was for though.