Air Force Museum

The Air Force Museum is located on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, OH. The main part of the museum is publicly-accessible, but an optional tour of the Presidential and Research and Development Hangars takes the visitor onto the base proper, and requires a special tour bus and the attendant security.

Like the Naval Aviation Museum, the Air Force Museum has renamed itself; when we first visited, it was the "United States Air Force Museum," but some time before October 2006, it was renamed to be the "National Museum of the United States Air Force." We were actually there the day (or one of the days) they were changing the lettering on the front of the museum (although I didn't take any pictures of that; I didn't realize what they were doing at the time).

Google Maps link. The round structure in the northwest is the IMAX theater just inside the main entrance. To the southeast is a hangar cut into two by a hallway; the smaller, southwest portion contains WWI planes ("Early Years Gallery"), while the larger, northeast portion contains WWII planes ("Air Power Gallery"). The next hangar east is the "Modern Flight Gallery," which houses the B-52 and various more modern fighter aircraft (although the walk-through B-29 is located here, as well). The third hangar is the "Cold War Gallery," containing the B-1, B-2, F-17, U-2, B-36, and other Cold War planes. Finally (at least as I write this -- I understand that the museum has plans for yet another hangar!), on the southeast, is the tall "missile silo" (aka "Missile & Space Gallery"). A fair amount northeast of the museum proper is the English air field and the flight line, containing a number of planes for which the museum has no indoor space.

As of now, I have not yet sorted through all of my pictures of the Air Force Museum, but some other page references this location. Thus, this is a "place holder" version right now, with only the pictures actually referenced. Come back some time later to see if I've finished up, or drop me an email to request me to prioritize the rest of these pictures.