Air Force Museum
Special Collections & Museum Grounds
34 reading stories
Enter the experience →'Fabric of the Air Force'
Eighty-five Air Force installations contributed handmade squares to this 20-foot quilt celebrating the service's 50th anniversary. The finished work combines local identities into one institutional portrait. Thread used in the quilt flew aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1997 before the piece was unveiled that December.
Read the story →390th Bomb Group (H)
The 390th Bombardment Group (Heavy), part of the Eighth Air Force, flew 301 combat missions from England during World War II. Its memorial takes the form of a B-17 Flying Fortress tail, joining the group's aircraft identity with remembrance of its crews. The museum credits the group with destroying 377 enemy aircraft during the war.
Read the story →A Liberator's Jacket
Sgt. Delbert Cooper wore this jacket while serving with the 71st Infantry Division, whose soldiers were among the first Americans to enter Gunskirchen Lager in 1945. The jacket connects one service member's wartime experience to the liberation of a concentration camp. Preserving it beside Cooper's account makes the history tangible while keeping the people imprisoned at Gunskirchen at the center of the story.
Read the story →AC-130A
The AC-130A transformed a transport aircraft into a heavily armed gunship able to circle a target while its side-firing weapons remained aimed inward. This aircraft was the prototype for 28 C-130 conversions. Work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base combined sensors, navigation, fire control, and weapons into one coordinated system before combat evaluation in Southeast Asia in 1967.
Read the story →Accordion
Fourteen-year-old Gertrude Wolff carried this accordion when she and her sister left Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport in May 1939. Because each child could bring only limited luggage, the instrument from her parents effectively became a second suitcase. The accordion holds the intertwined stories of rescue, separation, and a family's effort to preserve a piece of home.
Read the story →Bob Hope: 50 Years of Hope
For more than half a century, Bob Hope brought live entertainment to American servicemembers at bases, hospitals, ships, and combat zones around the world. His first military show took place at March Field in 1941. Wartime and USO tours carried him from World War II through later conflicts, making the performances a familiar connection between deployed forces and home.
Read the story →C-17 Globemaster III
The C-17 combines intercontinental range and a large cargo compartment with the ability to operate from shorter, less-developed airfields. That combination lets crews move vehicles, troops, medical teams, and relief supplies close to the point of need instead of relying only on major transport hubs. The aircraft displayed here is T-1, serial number 87-0025, the first flight-test C-17.
Read the story →C-60A
The C-60A was the military transport version of Lockheed's Model 18 Lodestar, carrying personnel, freight, and aircrew trainees during World War II. Its civilian ancestry made it useful immediately: the design was already a proven twin-engine transport, and military changes adapted it for wartime loads and operating conditions. The Army Air Forces accepted 325 C-60As.
Read the story →Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force
The Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force is the service's highest-ranking enlisted member and advises Air Force leadership on the enlisted force. The office gives enlisted experience a direct voice in decisions about readiness, training, morale, professional development, and quality of life. This display recognizes the people who have carried that responsibility.
Read the story →Concentration Camp Uniform
This rare surviving uniform belonged to Moritz Bomstein, who was imprisoned at Buchenwald. His son Jack later donated it to the museum. Striped clothing marked prisoners inside the camp system and stripped away personal identity. Preserving Bomstein's uniform restores a name and family history to an object designed to erase both.
Read the story →EC-135E
The EC-135E ARIA carried a large tracking antenna in its distinctive nose so engineers could collect telemetry from spacecraft and missile tests far beyond fixed ground stations. The aircraft became operational in January 1968 and supported the Apollo program as well as ballistic-missile and satellite work. By taking receivers, recorders, technicians, and their antenna wherever a mission demanded, ARIA made the test range mobile.
Read the story →Evolution of USAF Flight Clothing
Flight clothing protects aircrew members from weather, altitude, fire, acceleration, and the demanding environment outside ordinary human limits. The display follows that problem across generations, from leather and wool through pressure garments and spaceflight equipment. Every change balances protection, mobility, weight, and the systems already built into an aircraft.
Read the story →First Flight Mural
More than 163,000 ceramic tiles form this large mural of the Wright brothers' first powered flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. Designer Read Viemeister translated a few seconds of flight into a durable public artwork. The National Aviation Hall of Fame donated the mural to the museum in 1998.
Read the story →Flying Tigers Memorial
The Flying Tigers memorial preserves the memory of the American Volunteer Group and the distinctive identity it carried into the air war over China and Burma. Within Memorial Park, the monument turns a widely recognized wartime name into a specific place of remembrance for the people who served and for the international campaign in which they fought.
Read the story →Medal of Honor Awards in the Air Force
The Medal of Honor is the nation's highest military decoration, awarded for conspicuous gallantry and courage beyond the call of duty. Airmen received the Army design before a distinct Air Force medal was authorized in 1965. Maj. Bernard F. Fisher became the first recipient of the Air Force design in 1967 for his actions in Southeast Asia.
Read the story →Memorial Wall #1
Memorial Wall #1 brings together plaques honoring individuals, crews, units, professional groups, and other communities linked to Air Force service. Reading the wall as a collection reveals a history larger than any single campaign. Its many entries preserve relationships—between people, missions, places, and organizations—that can otherwise disappear from a gallery centered on objects.
Read the story →Memorial Wall #2
Memorial Wall #2 gathers many individual and organizational plaques into a shared place of remembrance. The wall's strength comes from accumulation: names of people, units, bases, specialties, and associations sit side by side, showing how Air Force history depends on communities as well as famous aircraft and leaders.
Read the story →Oxtail Club
A German guard used this treated oxtail club to herd prisoners at Dachau. U.S. servicemember John Bird recovered it when the camp was liberated. The small object documents the routine violence built into the concentration-camp system. Its preservation allows the exhibition to confront persecution through physical evidence rather than abstraction alone.
Read the story →P-47 Thunderbolt Memorial
The P-47 Thunderbolt memorial recognizes the pilots and support community connected with one of World War II's most rugged fighter aircraft. The museum's memorial register identifies the P-47 Thunderbolt Pilots Association with this monument. It complements the preserved aircraft indoors by focusing attention on the people who flew, maintained, and supported the type.
Read the story →Parallel Tracks to Germany
The same European rail system that moved troops and supplies also carried Holocaust victims and prisoners of war in cramped freight cars. The restored French forty-and-eight railcar represents the freight cars used for these wartime transports. France's national railway donated it to the museum in 2001.
Read the story →Prejudice & Memory
Prejudice & Memory uses survivor testimony, servicemembers' accounts, and original artifacts to examine persecution, liberation, and remembrance. The exhibition places Holocaust history within a military museum by showing what American forces encountered as they advanced into Germany and why the objects they brought home became evidence for later generations.
Read the story →Prejudice and Memory
This Kettering Hall view introduces the museum's Prejudice & Memory exhibition and the original objects that anchor its history of persecution and liberation. The exhibition combines survivor testimony with accounts from American servicemembers who encountered concentration camps, connecting individual evidence to the larger history of the Holocaust.
Read the story →Retrospect on Human Rights
The concluding section of Prejudice & Memory addresses human rights in the context of the Holocaust. The display covers prejudice, institutional persecution, and the denial of individual rights under Nazi rule.
Read the story →Service Flags and Pins
A blue star on a service flag represents a family member serving in the armed forces; a gold star marks one who died while serving. The American custom began during World War I and became widely recognized during World War II. These compact symbols allowed families and communities to make service and loss visible at home.
Read the story →The American Beagle Squadron
This memorial represents the 2nd Fighter Squadron, whose American Beagle identity gave generations of members a recognizable symbol and shared unit tradition. Memorial Park preserves that identity outside the operational setting where it was created. The marker helps connect squadron history with the people who carried its name through successive assignments and eras.
Read the story →The Violin
Robert Kahn was forced to play this violin during Kristallnacht in November 1938 while his family's home was destroyed and his father was taken to Dachau. Kahn hid the violin before escaping Germany. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he recovered it and preserved it as evidence of both persecution and survival.
Read the story →USAF Awards and Decorations
Air Force awards and decorations make acts of valor, achievement, service, and sacrifice visible through a shared system of medals, ribbons, badges, and citations. The display helps decode that visual language. Each award has formal criteria and precedence, but the object ultimately points back to a particular action, period of service, or responsibility carried by an Airman.
Read the story →USAF Chiefs of Staff
The Chief of Staff is the senior uniformed officer of the U.S. Air Force and provides military advice, leadership, and oversight for the service. This institutional display places successive chiefs in a shared chronology. Changes in their portraits, careers, and tenures parallel the Air Force's development across the Cold War, regional conflicts, space operations, and modern global missions.
Read the story →Valor Park
Valor Park honors U.S. Air Force Medal of Honor recipients within the museum's larger Memorial Park. The monuments commemorate individual acts of courage. The surrounding park also honors units, crews, families, and support organizations across Air Force history.
Read the story →Vietnam Views by Wilson Hurley
Artist and Air National Guard pilot Wilson Hurley recorded Southeast Asia from the viewpoint of someone who flew there. After deploying in 1968, Hurley trained as a forward air controller and flew 150 reconnaissance missions in the O-1 Bird Dog. His paintings translate observation, landscape, and operational experience into a personal visual record.
Read the story →WWII 8th AF Control Tower
A control tower gave a wartime airfield one place to organize takeoffs, landings, weather reports, and aircraft movements. This reproduction follows a standard 1942 design. Weather personnel worked on the first floor, controllers watched the field from the glazed second story, and wind and visibility instruments occupied the roof. Towers like this connected pilots, ground crews, and operations staff during the rapid movement of Eighth Air Force units through Britain.
Read the story →WWII Aviator Jackets
Painted and patched flight jackets became personal records of wartime service, carrying unit insignia, aircraft names, mission symbols, and reminders of home. No two jackets tell exactly the same story. Read together, their wear and decoration show how aircrew members built identity and remembered dangerous work inside a vast military organization.
Read the story →WWII Nissen Hut
The Nissen hut turned sheets of corrugated metal into a fast, economical shelter that could be shipped in pieces and assembled close to an airfield. Major Peter Nissen developed the basic design during World War I, and thousands served again during World War II as barracks, offices, workshops, and storage buildings. The Air Park example represents the huts used at Debden, England, where American fighter groups lived and worked beside the runway.
Read the story →YC-125B
The YC-125B tested whether a compact three-engine aircraft could reach short, rough landing areas during Arctic rescue operations. Its high wing, fixed landing gear, and auxiliary rocket equipment reflected a demanding requirement: lift off quickly with a useful load where prepared runways were scarce. Jet helicopters soon offered a more flexible rescue solution, so the Raider never entered large-scale service.
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