Museum Monday: Kansas Aviation Museum
There are close to 700 aviation/space-related museums in the country.
Each Monday on StuckatTheAirport.com we profile one of them.
Eventually we’ll hit them all.
Today: The Kansas Aviation Museum in Wichita, Kansas
The museum is near the McConnell Air Force Base and is housed in the art deco-style building that served as Wichita’s municipal airport during the 1930s and 40s. Among the museum’s collection of about 40 airplanes is this Beech Starship,
and a B-52 bomber, a refueling tanker, and this 1927 Laird Swallow, which crashed in 1929, was put into storage for decades and then restored by museum volunteers.
Another charmer? The Pretty Praire Special III, designed and built by Marion Unruh. According the museum website, this is the third in a series of airplanes named after Unruh’s hometown of Pretty Prairie, Kansas. Unruh designed the plane in 1951 but it wasn’t completed until 1957.
“It rolled, looped and could snap with the best acrobatic planes of the day.”
In addition to the airplane collection, the Kansas Aviation Museum has a wide variety of airplane engines on display and offers opportunities for volunteers to help with airplane restoration projects.
Do you have a favorite aviation-related museum you’d like others to know about? Tell us why you like it and it may be featured on a future edition of Museum Monday here at StuckatTheAirport.com.
Related posts:
- Museum Monday: 1940 Air Terminal Museum, Houston Hobby Airport
- Museum Monday: LAX Flight Path Learning Center and Museum
- Museum Monday: Elvis’s airplanes at Graceland
- Museum Monday: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
Souvenir Sunday: Free rides on Singapore Airport’s Giant Slide
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