The National Museum of the US Air Force is looking to expand the museum complex to house a retired shuttle and to move the Presidential Aircraft collection to the museum proper and moving out of the hangars on the AFB proper. Please consider a donation or at least joining as a "Friend" of the museum.
I lived at Wright-Pat in the 70’s as a kid. That was a great museum! I spent many weekends just looking at things I didn’t understand. It was a contributing factor as to why I got into aerospace.
Dayton bump!! My son loveds that place......
The displays are very nicely done and there is a wealth of information for aviation buffs. I highly recommend a visit if you are in the area.
My personal favorite is the P-26, which I would love to fly home....
I have contributed to the museum fund and encourage others to do so.
The museum has two hangars full of planes on WPAFB which would be coming over to museum property.
One is the Air Force One hangar (you can walk through FDR's C-54, Truman's DC-6, Ike's Connie, and the 707 which served from JFK's term through Reagan's).
The other is the amazing "experimental aircraft hangar" with everything from an X-1 and X-15 to the B-70. But the planes are so jammed together it's difficult to really see them well.
Propeller from the "Lady Be Good" Wheelus AB 1969
"Lady Be Good" Main article: Lady Be Good (aircraft) Nose view of Consolidated B-24D "Lady Be Good" crash site.On 9 November 1958, British geologists flying over the Libyan Desert spotted an aircraft resting on the sand dunes approximately 400 statute miles (640 km) south of Benghazi, Libya. A ground party reached the site in March 1959 and discovered the plane to be the Lady Be Good, a B-24D Liberator of the USAAF's 376th Bomb Group (AAF Serial No. 41-24301). The USAAF bomber had disappeared after a 4 April 1943 high-altitude bombing attack by 25 Liberators from an AAF base at Sulûq (near Benghazi) against the harbor facilities at Naples, Italy. All planes but one returned to Allied territory that night—the one missing was the Lady Be Good. Evidence at the site indicated that the Lady Be Good crew had become lost in the dark on the return from Naples and mistook the nighttime desert for the Mediterranean Sea. The aircrew had overflown Sulûq southward into the desert. With the B-24's fuel supply depleted, the nine men aboard had bailed out and disappeared while attempting to walk northward to civilization.
That’s one of my favorite museums, you can spend days in there. Great patriotic feel to it.