Somehow even though we like planes and spacecrafts and have visited multiple aircraft museums we never visited the one right in our backyard, the Tucson Air and Space Museum. Today we plan to rectify this mistake and after a three hour drive from Phoenix arrive at the entrance of one of the largest aircraft museums in the world. Even before entering we see a few airplanes, a tank and a rocket booster. This just wets our appetite regarding what we can see inside. So after paying for the entrance in we go.
The museums is so large in fact that we are not sure we can cover it in a half day but decide we will do our best. In the first hangar our attention is already captured by the reconstruction of the first plane to ever fly under its own power but the smallest plane is also really cute, and likely not ergonomical.
Each plane has a very interesting informational panel including the history of the plane itself, not just the model. We read as many as we can but if we would read all of them we would never exit the first hangar, and there are multiple ones and then also planes outside.
We focus on the more off beat aircrafts like the one person helicopter tried by the Marines, quite an interesting one, looks like directly from a James Bond movie. There are also of course more traditional helicopters but soon we decide to exit to get a feeling of how much is left to see.
And it is a lot, as far as the eye can see. Or so the saying goes. There are planes in every direction we look and so we decide to start with the hangars next to the initial one first and then go round and find the other hangars and explore them before finishing with the outside exhibits.
The second hangar is smaller and focused on drones and a bit on space exploration. At least we are in and out faster and visiting the whole museums seems more likely, little did we know how big it is actually.
Now it is time to explore outside, we decide to go into the directions of the helicopters as it is a dead end and then we can turn around and continue towards the fighter planes and other weird planes beckoning in the distance.
One of the more impressive helicopters and one that we wanted to see is the Skycrane. The shape is quite distinct and you can easily imagine how it can be used to carry containers, tanks and even houses. Next to it is a Soviet built helicopter salvaged from Germany, the socialist part.
There are also a few painted planes here, it is like an outdoor art exhibit and likely that is the idea. Quite an interesting one, in our opinion, and a good photo spot also.
Next are the fighter and bomber planes. They are quite intersting but at some point it becomes difficult to even separate them so we sit below a tree at a picnic table to eat some snacks and recuperate before moving on.
What is quite interesting is that also there are a few bombs on display, one is a real looking fake but the second one has the scary “general purpose bomb” label. Hmmmmm…..that is a bit ominous isn’t it?
Now we are getting into the land of giants with huge planes built for transport of supplies or bombing. Some were used during the siege of Berlin to relieve the Western area of Berlin, interesting bit of history.
There is also an official plane with the description of Guantanamo Bay, not a plane you ever want to find yourself on either as a detainee or as the detainer actually.
Next we see a Lockheed Constellation that belonged to TWA, the shape is quite unique. And seeing an airplane that belonged to the storied airline company brings back memories from our visits to other air museums. It is close to a closed off area where they are restoring other aircrafts with the goal of exhibiting them in the museum in the future.
And then we discover a bridge over a wash leading to a completely new section of planes that we didn’t plan on. We cross the bridge and are greeted by an Early Warning plane, it was used to alert the US in case of a nuclear strike.
This section has some huge and frankly unexpected planes. Like SOFIA a NASA observatory for Infrared Astronomy that had to fly high in the stratosphere and the even more unexpected Flying Eye Hospital. It was flying from country to country to train doctors in eye procedures, very worthy but still unexpected.
Next to these airplanes are two hangars. We enter the first one, it is full of WW2 airplanes and people. In fact there are people everywhere, the museum is a major attraction, but here it seems there are even more. We are especially drawn to the Flying Boat, the description says that after the army it was used as a private plane. Did the private owner really have machine gun peaking from the windshield?!? That would have been cool to own then.
The second hangar here has an interesting exhibit about Japanese kamikaze planes and torpedoes. We knew about the planes but the torpedoes are new to us even though it makes sense. Neither of them was really that successful except from a psychological perspective.
However the centerpiece is a transport plane with a jeep next to it for size. It would have been able to carry quite a few of them for deployment, interesting.
The next and last major hangar starts with German miracle weapons. The V2 rocket missiles everyone has heard about. We didn’t hear about the Fritz – X Guided Bomb that terrorized the allies as it was precision radio guided until a jamming method was discovered and the effectiveness decreased instantly.
The centerpiece is a huge plane that was used by the British in India and then remained as part of the Indian airforce before being donated to the museum. Interesting history, really.
Back outside we have one hour left so we sprint, figuratively, to the section with presidential and official planes. There are a few Air Force One planes here used by Eisenhower and Kennedy between others.
But the plane we want to see is the Super Guppy, it is really quite a weird one and visible from everywhere on the ground. It is huge and was used to carry rocket parts among other large parts and huge quantity of products.
The last, smaller, hangar hold a Boeing B-17G (PB-1G) Flying Fortress. It is part of the 390th Memorial Museum, a museum inside a museum. This is actually the most popular exhibit or maybe everyone congregated here as it is closest to the exit.
It actually has some interesting informational panels showing where they bombed in Europe and where the flak areas were and also giving the background for an incident in 1943, that is long forgotten, that led to jacket art being officially forbidden for US airmen.
We spend the last minutes inside the initial hangar where we still had quite a few airplanes to see. Our focus is on the SR-71 Blackbird, a plane that we admired for some time but has been declassified only relatively recently. And then after a short visit to the shop we are out and it is time to find something to eat, we are famished.
Our first choice is full with a wait time of one hour. So we go to our second choice which is open and we order extravagantly for us, a platter of appetizers plus two mains. The appetizers are worth it really they are all good and there is also a salsa bar which is great idea also.
The mains are also good and well done and we have enough left to take leftovers back to Phoenix. There are no surprises on the way and in the evening we arrive back in Phoenix after a great time exploring the planes in this huge museum.
