Florence Museum pics

Mon Aug 22, 2005 11:18 am

The Florence Air Museum was mentioned in another thread and it reminded me that while I once drove by it with my parents when I was very young, I never got to visit the Museum. So anyone got pictures they would like to share?

What did they have over the years and where is it now? I know the Destroyer and B-57 went to Elmira and B-47 went to the Mighty 8th Museum. I swear I once hear that something big was moved to Dayton long before the Museum closed?

Jim

Mon Aug 22, 2005 1:11 pm

A-26K was scrapped on site. The engine QECs were shipped to W/P. The Navy EC121 Connie had been damaged in a grass fire. The gate was locked so the firemen let it burn. The rear fuselage sustained the damage. The majority of that aircraft was scrapped on site but most of the fuselage was saved and is now with a private collector in N.Carolina. I believe the C-119 was scrapped also.

Mon Aug 22, 2005 2:48 pm

Parts of the C-121 and KC-97 were sold on e-bay back in the late nineties... it was really quite pitiful. They had some neat stuff there. i did take quite a few pictures... got to dig them out from somewhere!

More later.

Cheers,
Richard

Mon Aug 22, 2005 4:03 pm

The B-29 that was sitting there, did I read somewhere that Kermit got it????

I did not know that the B-26K got cut up............sad!!! My father had a good friend that worked on that A/C in Vietnam.

Mon Aug 22, 2005 4:07 pm

Didn’t some of the A/C also go to Warren Robin’s Museum in Georgia? I think the B-66 was one.

Mon Aug 22, 2005 5:54 pm

Here's a good site that says a lot about where some of the aircraft moved to as well as pics.

http://www.coastcomp.com/av/florence/florence.htm

Mon Aug 22, 2005 6:20 pm

Sad thing about the A-26K is that not many were preserved. The USAFM said they scrapped it because of corrosion, I have it from someone who was there when they cut it up that there WAS some surface skin corrosion but the structure was solid.

Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:24 am

Bump.

I saw the on-Mark thread and started to ask about the Florence B-26K but decided to search the threads on Florence first .... I stopped by the museum in the early 80's and took photos but they are not handy. I remember seeing an OH-58 fairly shot up from Grenada. Does anyone else have stories to share of this museum, particularly the Invader?

Ken