Pima Air & Space Museum

It rained here on Saturday night and into Sunday so we sat tight yesterday and watched the Superbowl, then we joined the crowd in the hot tub. This put us a day behind in our plans for Tucson but today we learned that a bicycle trail we had planned to ride has been detoured from along the river onto city streets so we will skip that item.

Today we visited the Pima Air & Space Museum which is located near us on the south side of Tucson. The museum has a large number and variety of aircraft and associated items on display; the aircraft are not limited to military airplanes. There are four hangers that display some of the aircraft, the 390th Memorial Museum is very well done and contains a WWII era B-17G, and the Space Gallery contains some interesting displays and a mockup of an X-15. Most of the aircraft are outdoors where their exposure to the elements has left some of them quite weathered.

 

 

The Bumble Bee was the worlds smallest biplane with a 6 ft 6 in wingspan and a 9 ft 4 in length.

 

The BD-51 Micro Jet is the smallest jet to fly with a 17 ft wingspan, 12 ft 9 in length.

 

The SR-71 Blackbird is a tour highlight for many.

 

F4U Corsair

 

TBM Avenger.

 

B-29 Superfortress,

 

The 390th Memorial Museum is well done and worth a visit.

 

Outside, narrated tram tours are offered on a regular basis but we opted to walk the grounds, each plane has a small sign near it which indicates the manufacturer, the model and the years the model was in service. After completing our walkthrough of the hangers we looked at some of the aircraft outdoors and then stopped to eat our lunch before finishing outside and checking out the Space Gallery which contains a small moon rock.

 

This one didn’t carry a president but did fly the hostages out of Iran.

A Lockheed 1L-10 Electra which I believe is similar to what Amelia Earhart was piloting when she disappeared.

 

This B-36 is huge, the tires are about five feet tall.

 

This converted tanker was a NASA “weightless trainer” for astronauts, better known as the vomit comet.

 

A small piece of the moon. It was presented to the museum by NASA and Col. Frank Bormen who is from Tucson.