National Air Force Museum

[arg]

"It hasn't been all success stories."      True.  I had heard that around the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Museum was offered a Tu-95 Bear, and the Museum turned the offer down.  Maybe there's more behind-the-scenes that made the deal more difficult than what came out, but imagine the Bear displayed nose-to-nose with a B-52!

[Nate]

 

15 hours ago, Spruemeister said:

Sometimes history has meant very little to the museum. 

 

I was noticing the same thing while looking through the website - some of the artifacts are amazing and others have taken huge liberties to weave them into the collections. The ones that stood out to me were the B-25 they randomly found but have converted into a Doolittle Raider look-a-like because that's cooler, the Mosquito that was built in 1946 but it was a lot like what the USAAF flew so we've got one, and an honest-to-god captured Me-262 that was just painted with some German looking camo because, yea, why not? On the flip-side you have stuff like Bockscar, the SR-71 with the highest sortie count, the Apollo 15 crew module, X-15A-2...

 

Regardless, I am still pumped to be able to wander that collection.

[bashace]

I used my Nikon D750 with a Tamron Super Wide f/2.8 lens without flash set in Sports Mode, couldn't have asked for better pics considering the lighting and backdrops.

[southwestforests]

22 hours ago, Spruemeister said:

Sometimes history has meant very little to the museum. 

That gives rise to an urge to make some kind of comment about symptoms of how the blue suit brass and reality are not always on the same page but that kind of comment probably wouldn't be appropriate to this forum so I will refrain from making it.

[Da SWO]

12 hours ago, southwestforests said:

That gives rise to an urge to make some kind of comment about symptoms of how the blue suit brass and reality are not always on the same page but that kind of comment probably wouldn't be appropriate to this forum so I will refrain from making it.

Ironically, Museum leadership is primarily civilian.  FWIW- I spotted a mistake on the MC-12 display and pointed it out to my friend (employed there) they had to change the display placard.

 

Some of the issues come from DC (IMO) there was a HC-130 that had the record for the longest flight by a prop driven plane, it went to the bone yard and was chopped up in 1996. The CSAF at the time wasn't friendly to non-fighter communities.

[Scooby]

On 3/9/2023 at 6:43 PM, Da SWO said:

Ironically, Museum leadership is primarily civilian.  FWIW- I spotted a mistake on the MC-12 display and pointed it out to my friend (employed there) they had to change the display placard.

 

Some of the issues come from DC (IMO) there was a HC-130 that had the record for the longest flight by a prop driven plane, it went to the bone yard and was chopped up in 1996. The CSAF at the time wasn't friendly to non-fighter communities.

The B-26 on display has a placard that mentions it’s service in the RCAF. We never flew the B-26. Not sure if it still says that, I’ve visited the museum think on 26 different occasions and it was still there each visit. I did point it out a few times to volunteers.

[ikar]

And then there's the XC-99 that was brought from its resting place between Lackland and Kelly air force bases. It was the only one and I went through it on one of my TDYs to Lackland for either Combat school or Traffic Accident Investigtion school.  It was an interesting aircraft and I got some nice pictures of its interior.