Looking for Information on Closed/Renamed Aviation Museums

[Noha307]

In the early '70s there was a museum in Michigan that closed.
Among other items, it had an Albatross and one of the prototype/service test YOH-6s.

I read somewhere that the Michigan Sate police were interested in getting the helicopter...probably until they learned of the cost of replacing/overhauling the engine/transmission/rotors.*

Anyone know where it was, what it had and where the aircraft went?

Which particular aircraft are you asking about? According to Baugher, there were at least 7 YOH-6es and they met various fates. On the other hand, according to Goodall, the Albatross was apparently s/n 51-7169. Aerial Visuals reports that all that remains of that aircraft is the fuselage, which is stored at Palm Beach.

Or are you asking about the museum as a whole? I am assuming that the museum was at what is now MBS Airport, as that airport is located in Freeland.

[JohnB]

I was wondering about the museum as a whole...location, ac it had, and if any of them might survive.
About the YOH-6s..Baugher only has one going to the Army Aviation Museum...one went to Aberdeen (as a target?). The others have no post-military fates.

[Rauhbatz]

Going thru some bins at our storage facility I found a flyer from the Florence Air Museum. We drove by this on trips from Ohio to Myrtle Beach. I remember the E-121 Connie in the field next door.

Just after Hurricane Hugo I went to see it and was pretty hammered. One thing I didn't see from the road is that they had some of the Apollo NASA consoles from the Cape.

They also had a V-2 engine and a V-1 (Loon), the latter i think is in Udvar Hazy as the color scheme looks the same from my old photos.

One amusing Hugo story I heard from the museum folks. The winds were so strong that the B-47 actually flew off its concrete pedestals and landed on the ground several feet away. That may have been the last unofficial B-47 flight ever....

[aircuda]

I believe there was a museum in Allentown, PA in the early 90's. I think it was called the Allied Air Museum or something to that effect. They had a flyable Grumman Tracker and also some helicopters and a C-47 in various states of disrepair.

[Pogmusic]

Many of the Florence Air Museum aircraft went to the Museum of Aviation at Robins AFB, the B66 was one of those.

[Cubs2jets]

Some of the items from Florence ended up with the Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte. All of the space related stuff is stored in the Bat Cave likely never to be seen by the public again. Several aircraft are also stored away or rotting outside in the weather.

C2j

[Jerry O'Neill]

Wings and Wheels in Orlando closed and had to auction off their stuff back in the 1980's. They were originally based in Santee, South Carolina, I think Dolph Overton was the founder and originally had the museum in New Jersey at Andover-Aeroflex Airport.

I think there was a small museum at Toughkenamon, PA, outside Philadelphia, called the Colonial Flying Corps Museum. Not sure what exactly what was there but I know Lex Dupont sometimes had his FM-2 based there. There was also a P-38L (CF-NMW) there from the defunked "Age of Flight Museum" in Niagara Falls, Canada .

Tom Reilly's Flying Tiger Museum in Kissimmee, FL is long gone along with the previous incarnation at Kissimmee based on some of Junior Burchinal's birds. Also in Kissimmee was the SST Museum wihich included the B-25 that later became Panchito.

In Fredricksburg, VA there was the Shannon Museum that I believe was later moved and became the Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond. http://www.vam.smv.org/

Harrah's Automobile Collection in Reno, NV the aircraft in the collection, which included a P-38 ( N505MH, now part of the Collings Foundation)and a P-40, were auctioned off back in the 1970's.

J.L. Terteling had a bunch of WWI aircraft in Boise, ID, but they are gone and I think Kermit Weeks got a few.

In Oakland, CA there was the American Air Museum which included the Boeing P2B-1 "Fertile Myrtle" D-558 drop ship now with Kermit Weeks.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now.
Jerry

Last edited by Jerry O'Neill on Wed Sep 23, 2015 10:08 pm, edited 4 times in total.

[T J Johansen]

Are there much details regarding Dave Tallichet's Yesterday's Air force?

They supposedly had various wings all over the country.

T J

[Chris Brame]

That's the Michigan Military Air Museum as mentioned above. Photos and info on this thread (scroll down a bit):
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=55268&hilit=longshot
ETA: The OH-6 is mentioned (with serial) in an issue of Air Classics from that period - let me check downstairs later and I'll have that number.

OK, I dug up the piece about the defunct Michigan museum that supposedly IDs this YOH-6:



Good info there (except "H-9" should be "H-19"). However, there's a problem: 62-4211 was the last of the five Hiller YOH-5A prototypes; the Hughes YOH-6As were 62-4212 through 62-4216. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that helicopter, so the mystery continues...

[Noha307]

Going thru some bins at our storage facility I found a flyer from the Florence Air Museum.

Any chance you could scan and upload that like Chris Brame did below?

One amusing Hugo story I heard from the museum folks. The winds were so strong that the B-47 actually flew off its concrete pedestals and landed on the ground several feet away. That may have been the last unofficial B-47 flight ever....

Coincidentally enough, I just learned as a result of this thread that the New England Air Museum survived a tornado strike. When Warbird Kid mentioned that they used to be called the "Bradley Air Museum", I went Google searching for any reference to their old name and came upon an article that describes what happened. It even came with an anecdote that rivals your B-47 one:

A C-133 transport was seen 250 feet in the air, standing with its nose straight up.

Scary stuff! There's a second article as well, if anyone is interested.

I believe there was a museum in Allentown, PA in the early 90's. I think it was called the Allied Air Museum or something to that effect.

I found a bunch of references, including an Aeroweb page, to an "Allied Air Force Museum" at that location. I assume it's what you're referring to. Allentown is not too far from Reading; any idea if it had any relation to the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum?

Wings and Wheels in Orlando closed and had to auction off their stuff back in the 1980's. They were originally based in Santee, South Carolina, I think Dolph Overton was the founder and originally had the museum in New Jersey at Andover-Aeroflex Airport.

I think there was a small museum at Toughkenamon, PA, outside Philadelphia, called the Colonial Flying Corps Museum. Not sure what exactly what was there but I know Lex Dupont sometimes had his FM-2 based there. There was also a P-38L (CF-NMW) there from the defunked "Age of Flight Museum" in Niagara Falls, Canada.

Never heard of either of 'em. This early warbird movement information is interesting stuff. I never realized how many of them there were.

EDIT: Found an obituary from 2013 on the founder of the Wings and Wheels museum. It has a paragraph or two about the museum as well.

EDIT 2: Found a webpage with information on the Colonial Flying Corps Museum.

Tom Reilly's Flying Tiger Museum in Kissimmee, FL is long gone along with the previous incarnation at Kissimmee based on some of Junior Burchinal's birds. Also in Kissimmee was the SST Museum wihich included the B-25 that later became Panchito.

Tom Reilly's the guy behind the XP-82 restoration, correct? I always knew he had something or other like that in his past, but was never quite sure what.

In Fredricksburg, VA there was the Shannon Museum that I believe was later moved and became the Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond. http://www.vam.smv.org/

What exactly was the VAM's relationship to the Shannon Museum? Did it change when Yagen bought it? (I have no idea how long he's been involved with that.)

Harrah's Automobile Collection in Reno, NV the aircraft in the collection, which included a P-38 ( N505MH, now part of the Collings Foundation)and a P-40, were auctioned off back in the 1970's.

J.L. Terteling had a bunch of WWI aircraft in Boise, ID, but they are gone and I think Kermit Weeks got a few.

In Oakland, CA there was the American Air Museum which included the Boeing P2B-1 "Fertile Myrtle" D-558 drop ship now with Kermit Weeks.

More great stuff!

That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now.

That's all you can think of? As in you're expressing regret that you couldn't remember more? Man, you guys are an awesome treasure trove of information! Thanks for all the responses!

Are there much details regarding Dave Tallichet's Yesterday's Air force?

They supposedly had various wings all over the country.

I've seen references to this organization from time to time, but never much more than that. So I'll second the above request for details. I've always pictured it sorta analogous to the CAF - a nationwide organization with branches scattered around. Although, I also get the feeling that it was one of those huge-ambitions-but-unrealistic-to-implement type deals. Is that correct?

EDIT (15/10/11): Found a newspaper article in the July 8, 1980 edition of The Evening Independent that mentions a B-17 landing at the "Yesterday's Air Force Museum" at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. There's another newspaper article in the August 15, 1983 edition of the St. Petersburg Times that mentions the museum as being "near the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station in Clearwater".

OK, I dug up the piece about the defunct Michigan museum

Between you and Mr. Rauhbatz I'm really starting to wonder where you're pulling this stuff from. It's excellent!

Last edited by Noha307 on Sun Oct 11, 2015 7:33 pm, edited 5 times in total.

[Chris Brame]

Between you and Mr. Rauhbatz I'm really starting to wonder where you're pulling this stuff from. It's excellent!

Let's just call it a case of Aviation Asperger's for me . Same reason I've been trying to verify the serial of one particular B-17 for the last eight years.

Page 3 of this thread has images of a Victory Air Museum flyer and of Earl Reinert that I posted (scroll way down), plus fellow WIXer Garbs posted a bunch of VAM photos:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24538&p=235001&hilit=flyer#p235001

[4RG.I.'S]

For a while we had the Kenosha Military Museum in southeast Wisconsin. The moved just across the border to Zion Illinois in 2008 and are renamed the Russell Military Museum. A nice collection of aircraft along with wheeled and tracked vehicles and a few water craft.

http://www.russellmilitarymuseum.com/

[Rob W]

Would like to have made it to the Indiana Aviation Museum in Valparaiso before it closed up shop in 2010. One of the museum's more well-known warbirds was the P-51 "Excalibur" (which I think now lives in Europe somewhere).

[Lon Moer]

From the late '70s to the mid-'90s there was a museum called "Wagons to Wings" at the Hill Country complex in Morgan Hill CA. They had a grass runway down the middle of their golf course and a great restaurant called "The Flying Lady" that had hundreds of airplane models that rotated around the dining room on a giant dry cleaning conveyor track.
When the facility closed, some of the airplanes and a lot of the models went to the "The Wings of History Air Museum" at the nearby San Martin airport and some of the planes went to "Hiller Aviation Museum" in San Carlos, CA.
Mike Coutches had a tall tail Mustang and a Hellcat displayed there. the Mustang went back to Coutches at Hayward CA and the Hellcat went Lone Star Flight Museum.
There was also a Ford Tri-Motor that went to Kermit Weeks.

[Jerry O'Neill]

It is the same Tom Reilly, who also restored Panchito.

As far as the Shannon Museum goes, it is NOT part of Jerry Yagen's Military Aviation Museum (name's are close!). The Virginia Aviation Museum is based in Richmond, VA and apparently Shannon's collection was the base that started it.
Jerry

Tom Reilly's Flying Tiger Museum in Kissimmee, FL is long gone along with the previous incarnation at Kissimmee based on some of Junior Burchinal's birds. Also in Kissimmee was the SST Museum which included the B-25 that later became Panchito.

Tom Reilly's the guy behind the XP-82 restoration, correct? I always knew he had something or other like that in his past, but was never quite sure what.

In Fredricksburg, VA there was the Shannon Museum that I believe was later moved and became the Virginia Aviation Museum in Richmond. http://www.vam.smv.org/

What exactly was the VAM's relationship to the Shannon Museum? Did it change when Yagen bought it? (I have no idea how long he's been involved with that.)