Visit in the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio

(by Axel Juengerich)

For those who like military aviation museums, the USAF Museum at WPAFB is an absolute must. The museum has four large hangars full of aircraft, missiles and some outside space with additional exhibits. It owns more than 280 aircraft which - due to space restrictions - are not all on permanent display. We decided to stop by in April 2025, It is simply impossible to look at all the exhibits in a single day, so we planned two days from the beginning. But we could have also used three or even four days because this museum is so amazing and so large. Therefore we can only show photos of a limited number of exhibits in this report

Our tour started in the World War II area. The exhibits there are mainly American aircraft, but there is also quite a number of German, British, as well as aircraft from other nations. A lot of exhibits were under restoration or stored when we were there. Here are a few examples of aircraft in this section:

Then we continued the visit in the "Cold War" areas, depicting exhibits from the 1950s until the 1980s.

For our friends, who like modern military aircraft, you can find those too at the museum. There is even a mock-up of a B-2, which is almost impossible to photograph due to all the other exhibits positioned around it.

One hangar houses the interesting "X" planes, test and research aircraft of which only a very few advanced to serial production.

Of course, the USAF Museum owns a number of aircraft which were used in the Presidential fleet.

At the time of our visit, the following aircraft were on exhibit outside the hangars. From my understanding, these exhibits are being exchanged from time to time.

During our visit we met a lot of interesting people - former USAF pilots, Vietnam War Veterans, etc., who engaged in very friendly conversations with us. Some of them shared interesting information and told us some very cool war stories. They seemed to be surprised finding visitors from Germany in the museum.

Of course the USAF Museum will grow over the next years. According to some employees, the museum will be receiving a Lockheed C-5, a VC-25A (once these are retired) and other aircraft. Luckily they have a lot of space to expand. The question - as always - is the funding of the future growth. I hope that things will work out for the them. The USAF Museum certainly deserves it.