In support of an official event 

The Museum will be closed Sunday, May 25
In addition, the Fourth Hangar will be closed Saturday, May 24

Access to the Presidential Gallery will be limited from May 15 to June 5
 

Fact Sheet Alphabetical List

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  • Research & Development at McCook Field

    When the United States entered World War I, an urgent need developed for an active research and development program for military aviation. A site was selected at Dayton, Ohio, because of its location relative to America's industrial complex, and on Oct. 18, 1917, McCook Field was established. For

  • Advent of the All-Metal Airplane

    By the early 1930s, aircraft design and construction technology throughout the world had advanced to the point where it was possible to mass-produce all-metal airplanes. There had been an all-metal plane as early as World War I, but it was an exception. Most airplanes of the war period and the 1920s

  • B-10 Alaskan Flight

    In 1934 the Air Corps established a project for a mass flight to Alaska of its new type all-metal monoplane bomber, the Martin B-10. Such a flight would not only prove the feasibility of sending an aerial force to Alaska in an emergency, but it would be excellent training for personnel flying across

  • Balloons & Airships

    Following World War I, the Air Service expanded its lighter-than-air activities. It continued the use of captive observation balloons for several years and began using free balloons and even non-rigid and semi-rigid airships. It participated in numerous balloon races and flew its airships in various

  • Fatal Flight of Capt. Gray

    Capt. Hawthorne C. Gray, one of the Air Corps' leading balloonists following World War I, was selected to make experimental high-altitude research flights in 1927. During his first flight on March 9, he lost consciousness at 27,000 feet because his oxygen equipment froze; he survived because his

  • Flights of Explorer I and II

    In 1934 the National Geographic Society and the Air Corps co-sponsored a balloon flight to investigate the stratosphere. Suspended below a mammoth hydrogen-filled balloon was the sealed gondola named the Explorer, which was designed to carry three passengers. The flight began at 5:45 a.m. on July

  • Roma Tragedy

    In 1920 the Army Air Service purchased a 410-foot long semi-rigid dirigible, the Roma, from Italy. Disassembled and shipped to the United States, the reassembled airship made its first flight in America from Langley Field, Va., on Nov. 15, 1921. Dissatisfied with the Roma's performance, the Army Air

  • Gordon Bennett Balloon Trophy

    This Gordon Bennett Balloon Trophy was awarded to the U.S. in 1928 for winning it for the third successive year when Capt. William E. Kepner and Lt. William O. Eareckson flew 460.9 miles in a free balloon from Detroit, Mich.The first Gordon Bennett Balloon Trophy Race was won in 1906 by two

  • Pan American Good Will Flight

    The MissionThe mission of the Pan American Good Will Flight of 1926-1927 was to take messages of friendship from the United States to the governments and people of Central and South America, promote U.S. commercial aviation and forge aerial navigation routes through the Americas.The MenThe Air

  • Gen. Billy Mitchell's Congressional Gold Medal

    This is the Congressional Gold Medal awarded posthumously to Gen Billy Mitchell in 1946. This medallion, the only one of its kind, was sculpted by Erwin F. Springweiler and struck by the Philadelphia Mint.The inscription on the front of the medallion reads: BRIGADIER GENERAL WILLIAM MITCHELLThe