  Location within California | |
Former name | Air Force Flight Test Center Museum [a] |
|---|---|
| Location | Rosamond, California |
| Coordinates | 34°54′43″N117°55′16″W / 34.912°N 117.921°W |
| Type | Military aviation museum |
| Website | flighttestmuseum |
The Air Force Flight Test Museum is an aviation museum located at Edwards Air Force Base near Rosamond, California focused on the history of the Air Force Flight Test Center.
The Flight Test Museum Foundation was founded in 1983 by Carol Odgers, Chuck Yeager, Robert Cardenas, and William J. Knight. [3] A 335-acre site on Rosamond Boulevard was given to the foundation in 1984 to build a museum, but construction was delayed for many years. In the intervening time, the museum moved forward with the creation of the Blackbird Airpark at Air Force Plant 42 in 1991 and began collaborating with a group of amateur archaeologists to display pieces of wreckage of crashed x-planes recovered from the desert. [4] [5] [6] [7]
By 1997, the museum had raised enough money to begin construction on a new 8,500 sq ft (790 m2) building, which was fitted out in 1999 and opened in July 2000. [8] [9] [10] Further efforts led to the opening of a Century Circle outside the west gate in August 2007 made up of six Century Series airplanes and the top of the former Edwards Air Force Base control tower. [11] [12] The museum's longtime chief historian, Dr. Jim Young, retired in 2011. [13]
Efforts to move aircraft to better storage conditions began in March 2012, when the museum cleaned up its storage yard. [14] This was followed by a number of significant moves in 2013, with the restoration shop being relocated to a new hangar with better equipment in February, three aircraft being towed to the museum grounds in August, and a VH-34 being transferred to a museum in Texas in September. [15] [16] [17]
After its closure in 2015, an XB-47 was acquired from the Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum. [18]
The museum broke ground on a new location outside the gate to the base in March 2018. [19] [20] Following site preparation, the first concrete was poured in June 2020. [21] The first phase of construction was completed in May 2023. [22]
The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter is an American single-engine, supersonic interceptor which was extensively deployed as a fighter-bomber during the Cold War. Created as a day fighter by Lockheed as one of the "Century Series" of fighter aircraft for the United States Air Force (USAF), it was developed into an all-weather multirole aircraft in the early 1960s and produced by several other nations, seeing widespread service outside the United States.
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The Northrop/McDonnell Douglas YF-23 is an American single-seat, twin-engine, stealth fighter technology demonstrator prototype designed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The design team, with Northrop as the prime contractor, was a finalist in the USAF's Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) demonstration/validation competition, battling the YF-22 team for full-scale development and production. Two YF-23 prototypes were built.
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The Lockheed/
The Boeing Bird of Prey is an American black project aircraft, intended to demonstrate stealth technology. It was developed by McDonnell Douglas and Boeing in the 1990s. The company provided $67 million of funding for the project; it was a low-cost program compared to many other programs of similar scale. It developed technology and materials which would later be used on Boeing's X-45 unmanned combat air vehicle. As an internal project, this aircraft was not given an X-plane designation. There are no public plans to make this a production aircraft. It is characterized as a technology demonstrator.
The General Electric J79 is an axial-flow turbojet engine built for use in a variety of fighter and bomber aircraft and a supersonic cruise missile. The J79 was produced by General Electric Aircraft Engines in the United States, and under license by several other companies worldwide. Among its major uses was the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Convair B-58 Hustler, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, North American A-5 Vigilante and IAI Kfir.
The Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program was a United States Air Force technology evaluation program initiated in the late 1960s by a group of officers and defense analysts known as the "Fighter Mafia". It was spurred by then-Major John Boyd's 'energy-maneuverability' (E-M) theory, which indicated that excessive weight would have severely debilitating consequences on the maneuverability of an aircraft. Boyd's design called for a light-weight fighter with a high thrust-to-weight ratio, high maneuverability, and a gross weight of less than 20,000 lb (9,100 kg), half that of its counterpart, the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. It resulted in the development of the General Dynamics YF-16 and Northrop YF-17. Late in the program, in 1974, with the promise of European sales, the Air Force changed the program name to Air Combat Fighter (ACF), and committed to purchasing 650 models of the YF-16, adopted as the F-16 Fighting Falcon. The U.S. Navy adopted a modified version of the YF-17 as the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.
Hill Aerospace Museum is a military aviation museum located at Hill Air Force Base in Roy, Utah. It is dedicated to the history of the base and aviation in Utah.
The Patuxent River Naval Air Museum is a museum at Lexington Park, Maryland, first opened in 1978, which preserves and interprets the Naval Air Station Patuxent River history and heritage of advancing US naval aviation technology with artifacts, photographs and film, documents, and related heritage memorabilia from Patuxent River and other naval stations. The museum is dedicated to those who have employed their talents in advancing naval aviation research, development, testing, and evaluation.
The Lockheed XF-104 Starfighter was a single-engine, high-performance, supersonic interceptor prototype for a United States Air Force (USAF) series of lightweight and simple fighters. Only two aircraft were built; one aircraft was used primarily for aerodynamic research and the other served as an armament testbed, both aircraft being destroyed in accidents during testing. The XF-104s were forerunners of over 2,500 production Lockheed F-104 Starfighters.
A zoom climb or an unrestricted climb is a maneuver in which the rate of climb is greater than the maximum climb rate using only the thrust of the aircraft's engines. The additional climb rate is attained by reduction of horizontal speed. Before a zoom climb, the aircraft accelerates to a high air speed at an altitude at which it can operate in sustained level flight. The pilot then pulls steeply upward, trading the kinetic energy of forward motion for altitude. This is different from a steady climb, where the increase in potential energy comes from mechanical work done by the engines.
The Lockheed NF-104A is an American mixed-power, high-performance, supersonic aerospace trainer that served as a low-cost astronaut training vehicle for the North American X-15 and projected Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar programs.
The 411th Flight Test Squadron is a United States Air Force squadron assigned to the 412th Operations Group of Air Force Materiel Command, stationed at Edwards Air Force Base, California. It conducted the Advanced Tactical Fighter program flyoff competition between the Lockheed YF-22 and Northrop YF-23 prototypes. Following the completion of the competition, the squadron has conducted testing of the Lockheed Martin F-22.
The 445th Test Squadron is a United States Air Force squadron. It is assigned to the 412th Operations Group at Edwards Air Force Base, California. The 445th is part of the Air Force Test Center. Originally constituted in 1943 as the 445th Fighter Squadron, it was involved in the early testing of the first U.S. jets, the Bell P-59 Airacomet and later the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star. The squadron would also be involved in flight-testing captured enemy aircraft, such as the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. During the Cold War, the unit served under the Air Defense Command as the 445th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, flying various interceptor aircraft in defense of the Continental United States. De-activated in 1968 following a draw-down of active duty interceptor units, it was re-activated as the 6512th Test Squadron Squadron in 1969, beginning its official flight-testing mission. The unit was de-activated, re-activated, and re-designated multiple times over its life, being most recently re-activated with its current name in 2022.
