An aviation museum , air museum , or air and space museum is a museum exhibiting the history and artifacts of aviation . In addition to actual, replica or accurate reproduction aircraft , exhibits can include photographs , maps , models , dioramas , clothing and equipment used by aviators .
4-556: The United States Army Aviation Museum is an aviation museum located on Fort Novosel near Daleville, Alabama . It has the largest collection of helicopters held by a museum in the world. The museum features some 50 aircraft on public display with aviation artifacts ranging from a replica of the Wright brothers' Model B military biplane to an RAH-66 Comanche. The museum has over 160 aircraft in its collection and holds 3,000 historical items. The museum announced plans to raise money to build
8-643: A new structure to replace the wooden buildings in which it was housed in 1977. The museum broke ground on a new building called the William A. Howell Training Support Facility in November 2019, which will not be open to the public. The new building opened on 12 April 2024. Sources: US Army Aviation Museum collection pages Aviation museum Aviation museums vary in size from housing just one or two aircraft to hundreds. They may be owned by national, regional or local governments or be privately owned. Some museums address
12-645: The ground or fly some of them. Museums that do not fly their aircraft may have decided not to do so either because the aircraft are not in condition to fly or because they are considered too rare or valuable. Museums may fly their aircraft in air shows or other aviation related events, accepting the risk that flying them entails. Some museums have sets of periodicals, technical manuals, photographs and personal archives. These are often made available to aviation researchers for use in writing articles or books or to aircraft restoration specialists working on restoring an aircraft. This aerospace museum–related article
16-513: The history and artifacts of space exploration as well, illustrating the close association between aeronautics and astronautics . Many aviation museums concentrate on military or civil aviation, or on aviation history of a particular era, such as pioneer aviation or the succeeding "golden age" between the World Wars, aircraft of World War II or a specific type of aviation, such as gliding . Aviation museums may display their aircraft only on
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