National Museum of the US Air Force

When people think of major aviation museums in the US, they usually land in Washington first. But the largest military aviation museum in the world is in Dayton, Ohio – on the grounds of an active Air Force base, in four halls where one long-range bomber stands next to the next. Here you’ll find the Air Force One on which Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in, the only surviving Mach 3 bomber, the XB-70, the B-29 that flew over Nagasaki and probably the most famous B-17 in the world. Admission costs nothing. What it does cost you is time: plan at least one day.

From a hangar corner to a record-setting museum

The story doesn’t begin with a museum but with engineers. In 1923, the Engineering Division of the US Army Air Service began saving technically interesting pieces at McCook Field in Dayton – engines, components, aircraft from testing. The collection lay in a corner of a hangar and served mainly specialists. In 1927 it moved with the test center to Wright Field, later called the Army Aeronautical Museum and, after the founding of the independent Air Force, the Air Force Technical Museum.

The collection only became open to the public in the mid-1950s, in an old building at the former Patterson Field. Many aircraft stood outdoors at the time and suffered from the Ohio weather. A nationwide fundraising campaign therefore financed a new building, which opened in 1971 – the core of today’s complex. After that, the museum grew step by step: a second hall in 1988, a third in 2003, and the fourth building in June 2016. Since 2004 it has carried its current name, National Museum of the United States Air Force.

That the museum stands in Dayton of all places is no coincidence. The city is home to the Wright brothers, and on the grounds of today’s Air Force base lies Huffman Prairie, where they kept working on their aircraft after their first powered flight. The prehistory is told in the article on the Wright brothers and the first powered flight.

Four halls, one trip through time

The museum is laid out chronologically. You start with the beginnings of military flying and work your way hall by hall to the present. According to the museum, the indoor exhibition space covers more than 19 acres, about 7.7 hectares – enough that even bombers with wingspans of over 70 meters don’t look cramped.

The table is a rough guide. Aircraft move into restoration, get rearranged or are newly added. If you’re flying to Ohio for a specific exhibit, check the museum’s website to see whether it is currently on view.

The fourth building: Air Force One and prototypes

Until 2016, a visit to Dayton had a catch: the presidential aircraft and the experimental aircraft stood in a hangar on the secured part of the Air Force base. If you wanted to see them, you had to sign up for a museum bus, go through a security check and had only limited time. With the fourth building, which opened in June 2016 and cost around $40.8 million in private donations according to the museum, that is over. More than 70 aircraft, missiles and spacecraft are gathered here in four galleries.

Presidential Gallery

The star is the VC-137C with the serial SAM 26000 – a military Boeing 707 that made history as Air Force One. John F. Kennedy flew to Dallas in it in November 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson took his oath of office aboard this aircraft after the assassination, and it carried Kennedy’s coffin back to Washington. According to the museum, a total of eight presidents from Kennedy to Clinton used the aircraft. You can walk through the cabin – an unusually direct access to a piece of contemporary history.

Next to it stand other government aircraft, including aircraft from the terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. For fans of propeller airliners, that’s exciting because many of these presidential aircraft were based on civil airliners of their time. How the presidential fleet has developed up to today is shown by the type pages on the VC-25A and its successor VC-25B.

Research & Development Gallery

Here stand aircraft that never entered series production or tested technology for later generations. The showpiece is the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, a six-engine bomber prototype for triple the speed of sound from the 1960s. Of the two built, only this one survives. The long, white fuselage with the folding wingtips is one of the most photogenic subjects in the whole museum – and one of the hardest, because you can hardly get enough distance for an overall shot.

Space Gallery

The space gallery shows the Crew Compartment Trainer, a replica of the Space Shuttle cockpit and middeck on which NASA astronauts trained. You can go inside. In addition there is the command module of Apollo 15 “Endeavour,” which orbited the Moon in 1971, a Titan IVB launch vehicle and reconnaissance satellites. If you’re interested in how the Shuttles were transported, the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft has the matching type page.

Global Reach Gallery

This gallery is about transport and aerial refueling – the backbone of any air force, which often gets short shrift in museums. One highlight is the Starlifter “Hanoi Taxi,” now displayed in the configuration of a C-141C, which flew the first American prisoners of war out of North Vietnam in February 1973. You can enter some of the transports. If you want to reliably tell military transports apart in today’s service too, read the article Recognizing military transports.

The icons of the older halls

Memphis Belle and Bockscar

In the World War II Gallery stand two bombers that everyone knows from movies and history books. The B-17F “Memphis Belle” is considered one of the first crews of the US bomber fleet in Europe to complete 25 missions, and afterward became famous on a publicity tour across the US. The museum brought it back from its former display site in Memphis; after years of restoration in Dayton, it has been on permanent display since 2018.

Just a few steps further stands the B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar,” which dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The museum presents it matter-of-factly, as part of the history of the end of the war in the Pacific. For you as a photographer, that means respect is appropriate here, and selfies in front of the aircraft don’t go over well with every visitor.

Cold War bombers

The Cold War Gallery is where you realize how big aircraft could get. The Convair B-36 Peacemaker with six piston engines and additional jet engines is one of only four surviving examples and nearly fills the hall with its wingspan. In the Vietnam and Cold War galleries you’ll also find other strategic bombers and reconnaissance aircraft like the B-52, the B-1B and the SR-71 Blackbird. Also in the third hall are the stealth aircraft: a test aircraft of the B-2 Spirit and the F-117 Nighthawk, regarded as the first operational stealth aircraft.

If you want to reliably tell the classics of war and the postwar era apart, you’ll find the key features in the article Recognizing vintage aircraft in the sky.

Photography in the halls

For photography, a museum day in Dayton is the opposite of a day at the airport fence. Instead of a telephoto lens and sun position, what counts is a wide-angle lens, light sensitivity and patience. The halls are bright enough to look around in, but for the camera the light stays dim and is often a mix of artificial light of different color temperatures.

Wide angle beats telephoto

The big bombers stand close together, wings overlap, smaller aircraft hang from the ceiling. For an overall view of a B-36 or XB-70, you need a short focal length and a vantage point with as much distance as possible – often at the edge of the hall or on a raised level. A standard zoom covers most subjects, and a true wide-angle lens helps with the big ones. Which focal lengths suit which purpose is explained in the article on wide-angle and standard lenses in spotting.

Details instead of wide shots

If the overall shot doesn’t work, it pays to look for detail: nose art, mission markings, serial numbers, engine nacelles, cockpit glazing. With aircraft like the Memphis Belle or Bockscar in particular, the details tell more than a picture of the whole aircraft.

Planning your visit

Opening hours and admission

According to the museum, it is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving, on Christmas Day and on New Year’s Day; on Christmas Eve, the museum has sometimes closed early in the past. Admission is free, and so is parking. Only the giant-screen theater and the simulators, which the nonprofit Air Force Museum Foundation operates, cost extra – including flight simulators and VR experiences. In the building there are cafés and a large museum shop with books and model kits. If you like building yourself, you’ll find inspiration in the article on aircraft model kits.

Getting there

Dayton is in southwestern Ohio and has only a smaller airport without long-haul connections to Europe. Most visitors from Europe therefore combine the museum with a trip across the US and come by rental car. The museum is about six miles northeast of downtown Dayton and has large, free parking lots. Getting there by public transport is awkward; check current bus connections before you go. The article Plane spotting trip to the US collects tips for trip planning, from the rental car to entering the country with camera gear.

Weather and season

Because almost everything is indoors, the museum is an ideal destination for days when spotting outside is no fun. On February 28, 2024, however, a tornado hit the southern part of the base and damaged a restoration hangar of the museum, among other things – a reminder that severe weather is to be expected in Ohio in spring. When there are severe weather warnings, the museum can close at short notice.

Dayton in the network of US aviation museums

The museum in Dayton is the counterpart to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington: there the breadth of aviation and spaceflight is the focus, here military aviation in all its depth. The Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, with its big halls, is closer to the character of Dayton. If you prefer to see aircraft under open skies, head to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Arizona, where hundreds of aircraft stand in the desert climate. The Museum of Flight in Seattle tells the story around Boeing, the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum shows the flying boat “Spruce Goose,” and the Intrepid Museum in New York has an aircraft carrier as its exhibition space.

For spotters who want to combine museums with airport action, Seattle and Washington are good options: at the Museum of Flight you look out onto Boeing Field, and from the Udvar-Hazy Center you see the traffic at Dulles Airport. You’ll find the spot guide for Dayton itself under National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB. And if you’re looking in Europe for a museum with a similarly big US collection, you can’t get around the American Air Museum at IWM Duxford.

Conclusion

The National Museum of the US Air Force is not a museum you “pick up along the way.” It is a destination in itself – four halls that tell the history of American military aviation from a replica of the Wright Flyer to the stealth bomber, with one-of-a-kind pieces you won’t find anywhere else. Air Force One SAM 26000, the XB-70, Bockscar and the Memphis Belle alone justify the detour to Ohio.

Allow enough time, bring a wide-angle lens and note the serial numbers. And remember that you are a guest on an active Air Force base: inside the museum, photography is welcome; outside, the military’s rules apply.