Flieger-Flab-Museum Dübendorf

If you want to know how a small, neutral country has defended its airspace for more than a hundred years, you go to Dübendorf. A few kilometers east of Zurich lies one of Switzerland’s oldest airfields – and on its edge the Flieger-Flab-Museum, the museum of the Swiss Air Force and air defense. From the Blériot monoplane through the Bf 109 of the war years to the Hunter, Mirage and F-5 Tiger, it shows the types with which Switzerland watched over its skies. Add to that Swiss in-house designs that no longer exist anywhere else, and the country’s most famous “Tante Ju” (Aunt Ju, the Ju 52).

This page introduces the museum as an institution: how it came about, who backs it, what makes up the collection and what role the neighboring airfield plays. For practical spotter tips for your visit, see the spot page Flieger Flab Museum at Dübendorf airfield.

Flieger and Flab: what’s behind the name

The somewhat unwieldy name is really a summary of the contents. “Flieger” stands for the air corps, meaning the flying units of the Swiss Army. “Flab” is the Swiss abbreviation for Fliegerabwehr (air defense), ground-based air defense with guns, radar and missiles. For decades the two together formed the air and air defense troops from which today’s Swiss Air Force emerged. The museum still reflects this dual structure: Besides the aircraft halls there is a separate area for the Flab.

Externally the museum now presents itself as the Air Force Center Dübendorf. Under this umbrella are the museum, a simulator area, event rooms, a shop and the Restaurant Holding. In guidebooks and on signs you’ll find both names; they mean the same address at Ueberlandstrasse 271.

Dübendorf: where it all began

The location is no coincidence. The first flights took place in 1910 on the grounds between Dübendorf, Volketswil and Wangen-Brüttisellen. When Switzerland set up an air corps during the mobilization in August 1914, Dübendorf became its base. In 1918 the federal government bought the grounds, and for the next decades it was the country’s most important military airfield.

At the same time, Dübendorf was also Zurich’s commercial airport for a long time. Swissair took off and landed here until civil traffic moved to Kloten in 1948/49 – to where Zurich Airport is today. After that, Dübendorf was purely military. Hunters, Mirage reconnaissance aircraft and the Patrouille Suisse shaped the scene; in 1985 the airfield counted about 46,500 movements.

On December 16, 2005, fighter jet operations ended. Since then the Air Force has used the field mainly for helicopters and light aircraft; its operations command is based here, along with a Rega base, the Federal Air Transport Service and an innovation park. For the museum this means it still sits at an active airfield, just without the noise of the jets.

From Hangar 13 to the Air Force Center

The fact that the museum exists at all is thanks to the persistence of a few individuals. For a long time, retired Air Corps aircraft were simply scrapped. Mostly only individual parts remained, such as engines, instruments, weapons and propellers. A depot set up during World War II in Schadau Castle in Thun for an army museum never led to an exhibition, and until the mid-1960s hardly any complete aircraft were preserved.

The turning point came with Hans Giger, director of the military airfields department from 1969 to 1979. From 1972 he gathered historical material in Dübendorf together with colleagues. In the same year the first internal tour took place in Hangar 13, and Hangar 14 was added later. Giger eventually turned directly to Federal Councillor Rudolf Gnägi, head of the Military Department. He agreed on two conditions: The work had to be done by volunteers, and the revenue went to the federal treasury. On June 9, 1978, the exhibition opened to the public for the first time – as the Museum of the Swiss Air Corps.

Friends, donations and a concrete shell

To put operations on their own footing, the support association VFMF was created in 1979. In the same year old hangars were renovated, Hangar 11 was added, as was a large radome. On August 8, 1980, the museum received the FFA P-16 – still one of its most important pieces today.

Under VFMF president Rudolf Friedrich, the association collected donations from 1985 for a new exhibition hall. Its roof is a concrete shell structure by the well-known Swiss engineer Heinz Isler, who became famous for his thin, arched shells. In 1988 Federal Councillor Arnold Koller inaugurated the hall. Already in 1987 the federal government had taken over financial responsibility for operations.

In 1997 the VFMF merged with the Friends of Flab association to form the Verein der Freunde der Schweizerischen Luftwaffe (VFL). In 2002 a second hall followed on the site of the small World War I hangars. After the end of jet operations, a simulator area was created in Hall 8. In 2008 the museum received the PRO AERO recognition award for outstanding achievements in military aviation.

Replicas built by people in their eighties

A special feature of the collection is replicas of early aircraft. Retired employees rebuilt historic types in workshops in Interlaken and Buochs that no longer existed as originals. According to the German Wikipedia, an estimated 45,500 to 60,000 working hours added up in total. For the replica of the Häfeli DH-1, the team’s average age was 84. How much volunteer work goes into projects like these is also shown in the article Volunteering in aviation museums.

Who backs the museum

The organization is typically Swiss: several partners, a lot of militia-style volunteer work.

• Verein der Freunde der Schweizerischen Luftwaffe (VFL): According to the association, it has about 4,500 members and aims to promote interest in the past, present and future of the Air Force – above all by operating the Flieger-Flab-Museum. In addition it keeps two Bücker biplanes for nostalgia and demo flights. Members get into the museum free during regular opening hours.
• MHMLW foundation: The nonprofit foundation takes care of additional exhibition and operating space as well as the selection, storage, maintenance and scholarly care of the collection “Military Historical Materiel of the Swiss Air Force.”
• Federal government: The army materiel is managed by the Central Office for Historical Army Materiel. Together with the foundation, it secures the heritage and its presentation to the public.
• Volunteers: A large part of the work in the exhibition, tours and restoration is done on a volunteer basis – just as at the founding in 1978.

The collection: over a hundred years of the Swiss Air Force

According to the museum, more than 40 aircraft and helicopters are on display. The tour is organized by era: pioneer era and World War I, the 1930s, World War II and the postwar period, the beginning of the jet age, development of the jet fighters, the Cold War and the arms drawdown. The table gives you some orientation; individual pieces are loaned out, given away or moved.

Pioneers and the era of the world wars

The museum tells the early years with a Blériot XI – the type with which aviation pioneers like Oskar Bider shaped the beginnings of Swiss military aviation – and with biplanes by the designer August Häfeli, built in Switzerland. A Fokker D.VII shows which foreign types came into the country after World War I.

For the years around World War II there is the Messerschmitt Bf 109 in the E-3 version and its little relative, the Bf 108 Taifun. Switzerland flew the Bf 109 as a fighter under its own roundel – a detail that surprises many visitors. Next to it stand the license-built Morane-Saulnier D-3800, a Fieseler Storch and the trainer Bücker Bü 131 Jungmann. After the war came the P-51D Mustang, which marked the end of the piston engine era for the Swiss Air Corps.

Swiss jets that never went into series production

The museum’s real treasures are two Swiss jet projects. The N-20 Aiguillon of the Eidgenössische Flugzeugwerke Emmen (Federal Aircraft Factory) was an ambitious attempt to develop a jet aircraft of its own. The FFA P-16 of Flug- und Fahrzeugwerke Altenrhein went a step further in the 1950s and flew as a ground-attack aircraft, but was not procured after setbacks. The example at Dübendorf is the only survivor – a true one of a kind. If you want to learn more about the Altenrhein works, you’ll find the Altenrhein Aviation Museum on Lake Constance.

Hunter, Mirage and Tiger

With the jet age came British types to Switzerland: the de Havilland Vampire, the Venom and finally the Hawker Hunter, which shaped the look of the Swiss Air Force for decades and also flew the first years of the Patrouille Suisse. Besides the single-seater, the museum also shows a two-seat Hunter T Mk 68.

From France came the Mirage III. In Dübendorf, several versions stand side by side: the IIIS interceptor, the IIIRS reconnaissance aircraft and the IIIDS two-seater. The procurement of the delta jet from Dassault went down in Swiss political history as the Mirage affair, because costs ran far out of control in the 1960s. The end of the jet lineage is the Northrop F-5E/F Tiger II, which many know from Patrouille Suisse displays. How to tell these jets apart in the field is explained in the article Identifying fighter jets in Europe.

Training, helicopters and Swiss industry

Training gets its due too. From Pilatus, the collection includes the P-2 and P-3 from the company’s early years as well as the PC-7 and PC-9. The PC-7 is still the aircraft of the Air Force’s PC-7 Team today. In addition there are the British Hawk jet trainer and a series of helicopters, from the Sud-Ouest Djinn through the Alouette II to the Alouette III.

The Ju 52 HB-HOP and Ju-Air

No aircraft is as closely tied to Dübendorf as the Junkers Ju 52. The Swiss Air Corps procured three aircraft in 1939 that stayed in service until 1981. Instead of disappearing into storage, they went to Ju-Air, founded in 1982, which offered sightseeing flights with them from Dübendorf airfield. The museum’s friends were closely tied to the project: The owner of the aircraft is the VFL association. For decades HB-HOT, HB-HOS and HB-HOP were a familiar sight in Swiss skies, later joined by the Spanish-built CASA 352 HB-HOY.

On August 4, 2018, the HB-HOT crashed in the Graubünden Alps; all 20 people on board were killed. The remaining Ju 52s were grounded, and in 2019 Ju-Air lost its permit for commercial operation. For a time the organization flew with replicas of the Junkers F 13. The HB-HOS went to the Wernigerode Aviation Museum in the Harz in 2023, and the HB-HOP now stands in the Flieger-Flab-Museum. There are currently no Ju 52 sightseeing flights. The full story of the type is told in the article Junkers Ju 52 – Tante Ju.

Air defense, radar and engines

The Flab area is what sets Dübendorf apart from many other air force museums. Here you’ll find the 20 mm Oerlikon gun and the 35 mm twin gun, the fire control device “Superfledermaus,” target designation and fire control radars, and the British BL-64 Bloodhound missile. In addition there are parts of the FLORIDA airspace surveillance system, with which Switzerland monitored its airspace during the Cold War. If you only know aircraft, you’ll understand here how air defense worked as a complete system.

The engine collection covers piston engines and jet engines from more than a hundred years. For this the museum offers a dedicated tour of 45 to 60 minutes – so plan for it ahead of time if engines interest you.

Simulators and flight experiences

The Air Force Center invites you to do more than look. Bookable options include simulators of the Pilatus P-3, the Mirage III, the F/A-18 Hornet, the Boeing 737 and the Boeing 747. There are also virtual reality films, which cost extra per film.

The VFL keeps real aircraft in the air: Its two Bücker biplanes fly nostalgia and demonstration flights. Whether and under what conditions passenger flights are possible, you can find out directly from the Air Force Center.

Planning your visit

The museum is at Ueberlandstrasse 271 in Dübendorf and is quickly reached from Zurich by S-Bahn and bus; the Air Force Center provides directions online. It is open Tuesday through Sunday, on weekdays only from 1:30 p.m., Thursdays until 8 p.m. and Saturdays already from 9 a.m. On Mondays the museum stays closed. According to the museum, adults pay CHF 15, and children and youths 6 to 16 pay CHF 6. You can pay in cash in francs, with common cards and with TWINT. Dogs are not allowed in the exhibition, except guide dogs and therapy dogs.

Combining it: museum, Kloten and Axalp

Because the museum only opens at midday during the week, you get an almost perfect day plan: traffic at Zurich Airport in the morning, history in Dübendorf in the afternoon. For takeoffs, Butzenbüel is a good choice, and for an overview of the apron, observation deck B. The article Plane spotting in Zurich collects all the other locations.

The civil side of Swiss aviation is covered by the Swiss Museum of Transport (Verkehrshaus) in Lucerne, which, by the way, received material from Dübendorf in 1970. If you want to experience the Air Force live, the Axalp live fire demonstration (Fliegerschiessen) is the autumn date. In a European comparison, Dübendorf plays in the same league as the Flygvapenmuseum in Linköping, the Military History Museum Berlin-Gatow and the Prague-Kbely Aviation Museum – more compact, but entirely focused on one country. You can place older types with the article Identifying vintage aircraft in the sky.

Conclusion

The Flieger-Flab-Museum is the memory of the Swiss Air Force. A collectors’ initiative in Hangar 13 has grown into a museum with the Isler hall, an air defense area, an engine collection and simulators, which still depends heavily on volunteers today. The collection ranges from the Blériot monoplane through the Bf 109 and Mustang to the Hunter, Mirage and Tiger, plus Swiss one-of-a-kind pieces like the FFA P-16 and, with the HB-HOP, the country’s best-known Ju 52.

Plan an afternoon, check the opening hours and combine the visit with a morning at Zurich Airport. For spotters who want to understand where Swiss military aviation comes from, there is no way around Dübendorf.