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  • German Ace and American Citizen Lt. Arthur Rahn

    Arthur Rahn was born in East Prussia in 1897. In January 1915, six months after World War I began, the seventeen-year-old Rahn volunteered to join the Imperial German Air Service. He began flying school in the spring of 1915 in the town of Koslin, near the Baltic Sea. During his combat flying career

  • Sikorsky HH-3E Jolly Green Giant

    The U.S. Air Force developed the Sikorsky HH-3E helicopter, nicknamed the "Jolly Green Giant," to perform combat search and rescue (CSAR) to recover downed Airmen during the Southeast Asia War. A highly modified version of Sikorsky's CH-3 transport helicopter, the HH-3E carried both armor plating

  • Northrop Grumman Defense Support Program Satellite

    Early Warning SatelliteDefense Support Program (DSP) satellites have provided the U.S. Air Force with early warning of ballistic missile launches and nuclear detonations for more than 40 years. The DSP satellite’s infrared sensors detect heat from missile plumes against the Earth’s background. This

  • Lockheed C-141C Starlifter "Hanoi Taxi"

    Note: Visitors are permitted to walk in this aircraft.The C-141 Starlifter was the US Air Force’s first major jet aircraft designed to meet military standards as a troop and cargo carrier. Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) built a total of 285 C-141s, and for more than 40 years, C-141s performed

  • Lockheed C-141C Starlifter "Hanoi Taxi"

    Note: Visitors are permitted to walk in this aircraft.The C-141 Starlifter was the US Air Force’s first major jet aircraft designed to meet military standards as a troop and cargo carrier. Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin) built a total of 285 C-141s, and for more than 40 years, C-141s performed

  • Gemini Spacecraft

    Manned Orbiting Laboratory SpacecraftThis spacecraft was built for the U.S. Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) program, a top-secret effort to take extremely detailed reconnaissance photographs of Cold War adversaries’ territory from space. The MOL program planned to use astronauts to

  • Mercury Spacecraft

    Project Mercury was the first American human spaceflight program. Its goals were to put astronauts into orbit around the Earth, to find out if they could survive and work in space, and recover the crewmen and spacecraft safely. Between 1961 and 1963, six successful flights proved Americans could fly

  • Project Man High Gondola

    Project Man High was a series of three U.S. Air Force balloon flights to the edge of space in 1957-1958. The flights reached the stratosphere at around 100,000 feet to study the effects of high altitudes on humans. This gondola helped researchers gather important aeromedical data, and its flights

  • Teal Ruby

    Experimental Early Warning SensorThis satellite, known as spacecraft P80-1, carried an experimental infrared telescope code named “Teal Ruby.” Designed to detect heat, Teal Ruby was meant to give early warning of enemy aircraft crossing the polar region toward the United States during the Cold

  • HEXAGON KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite

    HEXAGON KH-9 reconnaissance satellites were the largest and last U.S. intelligence satellites to return photographic film to earth. During the Cold War, 19 HEXAGON missions imaged 877 million square miles of the Earth’s surface between 1971-1986.HEXAGON’s main purpose was wide-area search. Analysts