Ft Worth Aviation Museum

Posted on by Lenny Flank

This museum, formerly known as Veterans Memorial Air Park, specializes in Cold War era aircraft.

Some photos from a visit.

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The museum

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6-cylinder Wright D1 engine. Designed for airships, only three engines were built in 1922-23.

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Defensive gun turret for B-36 Peacemaker nuclear bomber. In the end, the plane only carried a tail turret.

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The Petting Zoo. Poke and prod the airplanes all you want—just don’t climb onto them.

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TA-4J Skyhawk. Trainer version.

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A-7B Corsair II

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F-4 Phantom II. This is the QF-4S version, which saw combat in Vietnam and was later modified as an aerial target drone.

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F-105D Thunderchief. The “Thud” was a Vietnam-era fighter-bomber.

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F-14 Tomcat. US Navy fighter.

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CH-53A Sea Stallion helicopter transport

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Inside the Sea Stallion

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OV-10A Bronco ground attack

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F-102A Delta Dagger interceptor

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BT-13 Valiant trainer

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T-37 Tweet jet trainer

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The restoration hangar. That’s another Bronco in the back, and I *think* that’s a T-28 Trojan in front

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F-111 Aardvark

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F-5 Tiger, in USAF “Aggressor” paint scheme

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OK, this is an oddity: one of the original engineering mockups for the planned A-12 Avenger II, which was supposed to be a carrier-based stealth fighter-bomber. It was cancelled in the 1990s.

 

4 thoughts on “Ft Worth Aviation Museum”

  2. Good to see they keep their collection so well-maintained. It seems like these (relatively) smaller collections too often fall on hard times. The sight of once-high performance aircraft slowly turning to aluminum oxide is kind of depressing; this one’s a nice find.

    Plenty of interesting stuff, too; how weird to have an A12 artifact. And that trainer version of the F102 always looked funky and bug-eyed to me, with the side-by-side seating.

  3. Bev: I laughed when i saw the sign. 😉

    But I love the museums like this where the planes aren’t roped off and you can get right up to them and look inside.

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