New England Air Museum

The north-eastern part of the United States is called “New England” and consist of six states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. There are many aviation museums in the USA; mostly every state has its own museum, or sometimes even two or more. But in the six states of New England only one museum exists: the New England Air Museum. It can be found in Windsor Locks, which is a village near the capital of Connecticut, Hartford. Here Bradley International Airport is situated, and a part of this airport is in use with the USAF as Bradley Air Force Base. Not far from the main entrance of this airbase you find the museum.

The museum has an outdoor display, with ten aircraft in a good condition exhibited, and an indoor display with three buildings, containing many aircraft and helicopters, an engine collection and many, many exhibits. Moreover there is a storage hangar, stuffed with many aircraft, but closed to the public. Fortunately I got the possibility to take a look in this hangar.

The collection of the museum was much larger in former days, but unfortunately on October 3, 1979, at 2:56 P.M., a tornado touched down at the Museum, and in five minutes destroyed most of what had taken more than 15 years to build. This tornado destroyed a big number of aircraft outside, like an F-102A, a Skyhawk, a B-47, a C-124 and a C-133. The museum had to start from scratch and moved to the present location.

The outdoor aircraft were literally tossed around like toys by the tornado. The largest airplane in the outdoor exhibit, the C-133 Cargomaster, was lifted into the air and dropped on its back, its tail ripped off as if it were paper. Many of the 23 totally destroyed large aircraft could never be replaced because most of the only other examples of their kind are already in other air museums. Victims were for example an F-86 Sabre, an F-102A Delta Dagger, a C-54 Skymaster, a C-119 Flying Boxcar, a C-121 Constellation, a C-124 Globemaster, a C-133 Cargomaster,  a Convair T-29,a Lockheed T-33A, a Douglas F4D, a Vought F8U, a Sikorsky CH-37 and a Sikorsky H-19. Four aircraft suffered only minor damage: a Boeing RB-47A, a A-3 Skywarrior,  the Martin RB-57A and the Vought-Regulus Missile. Four were salvaged: the Grumman E-1 Tracer; the North American B-25; the Boeing B-29 (“Jack’s Hack”, now the pride of the Museum) and the Boeing BOMARC Missile. Seven were potentially salvageable (and were later): the RF-84F Thunderflash, the Grumman Avenger, the Lockheed Neptune, the F-104C Starfighter, the Boeing B-17, the A4D-1 Skyhawk, and the F-102 Delta Dagger. Two were questionable but later fixed and now in the outdoor display : the Grumman HU-16B and the Northrop F-89J.

All in all: a beautiful museum with a number of very interesting aircraft. Unfortunately not all the aircraft are on display with a storage hangar closed for the public. But if you are in Connecticut: visit this museum! Admission is only $15 (and for me, as a senior, $14).

And don’t forget to drive afterwards to the main gate of Bradley AFB. Near this entrance there are three aircraft on poles: an F-100D, an F-102A and an A-10A. Moreover there you can spot from the fence about eight Hercules transport aircraft of the Connecticut Air National Guard.