There’s a intriguing gem of an exhibition at the Louis A. Turpin Aviation Museum and Library in the lobby of the International Terminal at San Francisco International Airport.

With more than 150 objects and images, Civil Air Transport: Asia’s Airline of Distinction looks at early flight in China and Civil Air Transport (CAT), the airline that relocated to Taiwan in 1950 after the fall of the Nationalist Government on the mainland and became a secret operating division of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), operating as Air America over two decades.

You can see the exhibition in SFO’s Aviation Library and Museum through April 2013, or view some of the objects and photographs online here.

Photos courtesy SFO Museum

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