Looking for Information on Closed/Renamed Aviation Museums

[kalamazookid]

Another museum for your list- the Northern Indiana Aviation Museum in Goshen, IN. It didn't exist very long in the late-90s and early-00s. They had a really nice airworthy C-45, a T-6 and Skyhawk and T-33 projects. I think the ex-Steven Hay TBM Avenger was also associated with that group. Never found out what happened to this museum or any of the aircraft, other than the TBM.

[XL446]

Another one to add: the Combat Jets Flying Museum, formerly located at (going by the address on aero-web.org) William P. Hobby Airport, Houston, TX. I stumbled across this when reading about the history of the MiG-15 on display in Oshkosh, WI.
A note on http://www.aero-web.org/museums/tx/cjfm.htm says the museum has closed and all the aircraft were moved to Oshkosh.

Good luck with your quest!

Roger

[jspott]

The Bristol Heritage Collection was in Tennessee I don't know if it was ever open as a museum. They had a beaufort, Swordfish, Bolingbroke and Lysander projects. I cant find any info on what happened to these aircraft.

[Noha307]

I do remember the story of one that, IIRC, was in Canada and had a large collection of trainers and engines for them. I think he eventually got into trouble for shooting someone on his property and his collection was auctioned off after he died. Does anyone know who I am talking about and remember his name?

Yes, it was Ernie Simmons:
http://www.spitcrazy.com/Simmons-2.htm

Not only did you nail the name, but also even managed to find the page I remember reading! Thank you!

If you can think of anyone else that fits this category, don't hesitate to mention them.

EDIT: Somehow I managed to miss the fact that there were more posts on page 4 since I last commented. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure that I addressed everyone's comments and thanked you guys as well.

Another museum for your list- the Northern Indiana Aviation Museum in Goshen, IN. It didn't exist very long in the late-90s and early-00s. They had a really nice airworthy C-45, a T-6 and Skyhawk and T-33 projects. I think the ex-Steven Hay TBM Avenger was also associated with that group. Never found out what happened to this museum or any of the aircraft, other than the TBM.

I found a WIX thread from 2007 asking whether it had closed. According to the Registry, you're correct about the Avenger. According to a non-profit tracking website, Mr. Hay was not only associated with the museum, but actually ran it.

As an aside, while looking for information on the museum, I also found an article on the closing of the previously mentioned Indiana Aviation Museum. Furthermore, I came across a whole long list of aviation museums. Apparently it's somewhat old, so I need to go through it and see what no longer exists.

Another one to add: the Combat Jets Flying Museum, formerly located at (going by the address on aero-web.org) William P. Hobby Airport, Houston, TX. I stumbled across this when reading about the history of the MiG-15 on display in Oshkosh, WI.
A note on http://www.aero-web.org/museums/tx/cjfm.htm says the museum has closed and all the aircraft were moved to Oshkosh.

I found a couple pages from a book that provide some more detail on the museum. According to the book, it was founded in the mid-to-late 1980s, "was intended to be [focused on] the first generation of jet fighters" and would "eventually include no less than 9 jet fighters". Apparently, it was also the featured story in the March 1991 issue of Air Classics Magazine. My search also turned up an article on warbirds in the June 1990 issue of Popular Mechanics that includes a list of aviation museums.

The Bristol Heritage Collection was in Tennessee I don't know if it was ever open as a museum. They had a beaufort, Swordfish, Bolingbroke and Lysander projects. I cant find any info on what happened to these aircraft.

Strangely enough, I found a bit of information on this collection - in of all places - a book on British folk music. Apparently, a man named Graham Kilsby donated the Bolingbroke from that museum to the Bristol Aero Collection in England. If anyone wants to updated the Registry entry on this aircraft, I found some more information on it in a blog post.

Once again, thanks for the information. I've simply used this post to create quick reference for any information I've found on the museums, so that's why my responses are written the way they are. I also hope my answers were able to provide a little bit of help in return.

One quick final note: If anyone wants to try and look up information on these museums on their own, it really helps to put your search terms in quotation marks since that makes the search engine treat them as a single phrase. Given the frequency with which a lot of the words in aviation museum names are reused, it outputs a lot less extraneous results that way.

[DouglasJockey]

ship 9048 from Tallichet to Nashville to Bristol Aero Collection.....

[brucev]

Another now closed museum was Planes of Fame east out of Eden Prairie MN, closed in 1997.

[Lightninglover]

C-47A-30 42-23668 was at the Edward F. Beale Museum at Beale Air Force Base in 1993. I remember they also had a B-25 (some VIP’s plane) and the nose section of a B-29.

[carseneau]

You can remove the (pending) from Octave Chanute air Museum. Closed for good Oct. 31 2015.

[Zachary]

Effective March 1, 2017 - the EAA AirVenture Museum is changing its name to the EAA Aviation Museum.

[Noha307]

It's been a while since I've posted to this thread, so I though I'd update it with my list so far. The list is taken from an Excel spreadsheet on my computer.

Closed Aviation Museums
Name of Museum - Date Closed - Location - Notes - Reference(s)

• A.A. Cunningham Air Museum - Havelock, North Carolina - Apparently was planned, but never opened - [1], [2]
• Ada Aircraft Museum - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - [3]
• Age of Flight Museum (?) - Niagara Falls, Canada
• Air Acres Museum (?) - Woodstock, GA - [4]
• Allied Air Force Museum (?) - Allentown, PA - Relation to Mid-Atlantic Air Museum?
• American Air Museum - Oakland, CA - Relation to Oakland Aviation Museum?
• Antelope Valley Air Museum - Lancaster, CA - Relation to Milestones of Flight Air Museum? - [5], [6]
• Arlington Naval Air Museum - Arlington, WA - Status Unknown
• Bristol Heritage Collection - Hohenwald, TN
• Champlin Fighter Museum - 2003 - Mesa, AZ
• Coleman Warbird Museum - 1993 - Coleman, TX - [7]
• Combat Jets Flying Museum - Houston, TX
• Flightarama - Santa Ana, CA
• Florence Air & Missile Museum - 1997 - Florence, SC
• Florida Military Aviation Museum - Saint Petersburg, Florida - Previously known as the Yesterday's Air Force Museum - [8], [9]
• Flying Tiger Airport & Flight Museum - Paris, TX - [10], [11]
• Flying Tiger Museum - Kissimmee, FL - [12]
• Gallery of Aviation - Madison, WI - Personal collection of aviation artifacts, likely no aircraft - [13]
• Indiana Aviation Museum - 2010 - Valparaiso, IN
• International Flight and Space Museum - Santa Ana, CA
• Michigan Military Air Museum - 1974 - Freeland, MI - aka Mid-Michigan Air Museum?
• Midwest Aviation Museum - Danville, IL
• Movieland of the Air Museum - Santa Ana, CA
• North Cascades Vintage Aircraft Museum - Closing - Concrete, WA
• Northern Indiana Aviation Museum - Goshen, IN
• Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum - Closing Rantoul, IL
• Ohio History of Flight Museum - 1999-2000 - Columbus, OH - [14], [15]
• Pacific Military Air Museum - Los Gatos, CA - [16], [17]
• Pate Museum of Transportation - Cresson, TX
• Polar Aviation Museum - Blaine, MN Relation to Golden Wings Museum?
• Southwest Aerospace Museum - Fort Worth, TX - Relation to B-36 Peacemaker Museum? - [18], [19]
• SST Museum - 1981 - Kissimmee, FL - [20], [21]
• United States Aviation Museum - South Euclid, OH
• Victory Air Museum - 1986 - Mundelein, IL - aka Polidori Air Museum? - [22]
• Virginia Aviation Museum - Closing - Richmond, VA
• Wagons to Wings Museum (?) - Morgan Hill, CA
• Wings and Wheels Museum - 1981 - Santee, SC/Orlando, FL - [23], [24]
• World Aircraft Museum - Calhoun, Georgia - Mercer Aircraft Museum?
• Yesterday's Air Force (?) - Multiple locations? - Comparable to CAF?

A couple notes. Some of these may have never existed on anything other than paper. Others may have simply been personal collections that the owner haphazardly attempted to put on display or tried to organized into a "museum" to get a tax write off. I don't know if the names used here were the official names of the museum or just something they were referred to by. Some of these may have morphed in museums that still exist today through transfer of their collection.

EDIT (25-02-16): Add additional reference to the Florida Military Aviation Museum entry and renumber references.

Last edited by Noha307 on Sun Feb 16, 2025 10:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[Noha307]

And here's the list of aviation museum previous names. The introduction and explanation in the previous post also applies here.

Previous Names of Aviation Museums

• 1941 Historical Aircraft Group Museum <-- National Warplane Museum (?) *Unknown order?
• Aerospace Museum of California <-- McClellan Aviation Museum
• Air Force Flight Test Museum <-- Air Force Flight Test Center Museum
• Air Mobility Command Museum <-- Dover Air Force Base Museum (?) <-- Dover Air Force Base Historical Center
• Air Zoo <-- Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum
• Alaska Aviation Museum <-- Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum (?)
• Barksdale Global Power Museum <-- Eighth Air Force Museum
• Delta Flight Museum <-- Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum
• EAA Aviation Museum <-- EAA AirVenture Museum
• Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum <-- Captain Michael King Smith Evergreen Aviation Educational Center and Museum <-- Evergreen AirVenture Museum <-- Evergreeen Museum (?)
• Fantasy of Flight <-- Weeks Air Museum
• Florida Air Museum <-- International Sport Aviation Museum <-- Sun ‘n Fun Air Museum <-- Aerospace Discovery at Florida Air Museum
• Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum <-- San Diego Aerospace Museum (?) *See SDASM
• Greater Saint Louis Air & Space Museum <-- St. Louis Aviation Museum
• Mid-America Air Museum <-- Liberal Air Museum
• Museum of Flying <-- Douglas Museum and Library
• National Air and Space Museum <-- National Air Museum
• National Museum of Aviation and Technology at Historic Willow Run <-- Yankee Air Museum
• National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force <-- Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum
• National Museum of the United States Air Force <-- United States Air Force Museum <-- Air Force Technical Museum <-- Army Aeronautical Museum
• National Naval Aviation Museum <-- National Museum of Naval Aviation <-- Naval Aviation Museum
• New England Air Museum <-- Bradley Air Museum
• Niagara Aerospace Museum <-- Ira G. Ross Aerospace Museum
• Oakland Aviation Museum <-- Western Aerospace Museum
• Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor <-- Military Aviation Museum of the Pacific <-- Pacific Aerospace Museum (?) *Related, but not same museum
• Pima Air & Space Museum <-- Tucson Air Museum <-- Pima County Air Museum *Unknown order?
• Pioneer Air Museum <-- Alaskaland Pioneer Air Museum
• Planes of Fame Museum <-- Ontario Air Museum <-- The Air Museum
• Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum <-- Fred E. Weisbrod Museum/International B-24 Museum
• San Diego Air & Space Museum <-- San Diego Aerospace Museum (?) *See FLAM
• Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum <-- Strategic Air and Space Museum <-- Strategic Air Command Museum <-- Strategic Aerospace Museum
• Texas Air & Space Museum <-- English Field Air & Space Museum (?)
• Travis Air Force Base Heritage Center <-- Jimmy Doolittle Air & Space Museum <-- Travis Air Museum
• Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum <-- Valiant Air Command Air Museum (?)
• Vintage Aero Flying Museum <-- LaFayette Escadrille Flying Museum
• Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum <-- Lowry Heritage Museum

[T J Johansen]

The aforementioned thread also mentioned another museum I have never heard of before: the "Polidori Air Museum".

That could have been a mistake in the article; Amilio Paul Polidori owned the land where the aircraft, which largely belonged to Earl, were displayed and flew his Taylorcraft from there (it was basically farmland with a 3000' grass airstrip and a barn-like hangar; the aircraft were outdoors).
A bit of trivia about Paul: He once told me his US-born cousin was killed flying for Italy early in WWII. Recently I checked the Chicago Tribune archives and sure enough:



Some further Googling reveals Amerigo Polidori was a graphic artist of some note before the war.

And Paul Polidori himself was killed in the crash of that Taylorcraft together with a photographer near the field in Mundelein on June 30, 1985.

Another museum with aviation content was Silverwood themepark in Athol, ID. Owner Gary Norton based several vintage aircraft there in the 80/ 90s. I think the original name was Henley Aerodrome.

T J

[raconnel]

The Virginia Aviation Museum closed in 2016. Most of the aircraft are now on display at the new Shannon Air Museum in Fredericksburg, VA.

Richard

[JohnB]

About the Henley Aerodrome...
Gary Norton stated it as a Old Rhinebeck-like place with weekly airshows. Circa 1974. It had a hangar and a restaurant that looked like an old airport building.
It wad owned by Norton but run by Henley...who was famous for having three aircraft with the same registration number: N5050 (albeit with different suffix letters).
You could buy rides in J-3s and Tiger Moths...N5059R was the Cub, the two months were N5050 and 5050C. I flew in a Cub and Tiger Moth there...I didn't write down the N numbrts, but based on the camouflage scheme, I believe it was 5050C.
Henley had a nice house across the runway And was well known for building WWI reproductions.

Later Norton expanded and got a P-51, however a hangar fire destroyed it in the late 70s-early 80s. He had a piece of melted aluminum on the restaurant wall. He later got a P-40.

Later in the 80s, he built the theme park...on the old runways. The old restaurant is still in use and the house/hangar is also still there.

Last edited by JohnB on Mon Jul 30, 2018 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Chris Brame]

Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum - Closing Rantoul, IL

Closed as of November 1, 2015.