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Yankee Air Museum

Yankee Air Museum
YankeeAirMuseumLogo.png
Yankee Air Museum is located in Michigan
Yankee Air Museum
Location within Michigan
Established 1981 (1981)
Location Willow Run Airport, Van Buren Township, Michigan, United States
Coordinates 42°14′21″N 83°30′29″W / 42.23903°N 83.50808°W / 42.23903; -83.50808
Type Aviation museum
Website www.yankeeairmuseum.org

The Yankee Air Museum is an aviation museum located at Willow Run Airport in Van Buren Township, Michigan. The museum has a small fleet of flying aircraft and a collection of static display aircraft outdoors.

The Yankee Air Force Inc. was founded in 1981 to pursue these goals:

On the night of October 9, 2004, the Yankee Air Museum's hangar on the northeast side of Willow Run Airport (KYIP) burned down. The B-17, B-25 and C-47 were saved through heroic efforts by museum volunteers. The Stinson was at another hangar. Everything else inside the hangar was destroyed, including the original prototype North American YOV-10A Bronco, Waco CG-4A Glider, a former Thunderbirds Republic F-105, Aero L-39, Link Trainer, artifacts, spare parts, tools, and the Museum's library.

Rebuilding plans were underway within days and in 2008, the museum transitioned from being a membership club to a director-driven organization with an 11-member board. The objective of the museum's fundraising arm, the Michigan Aerospace Foundation, was to build a greatly expanded, state-of-the-art aviation museum and aerospace facility to replace the lost facility. Ground was broken for a new museum building in April 2007.

In 2009, the museum purchased a building from the Michigan Institute of Aviation and Technology (MIAT), on D Street to the east of the airfield, intending it as the new home of the museum collection.

In summer 2010, the museum opened the David and Andrea Robertson Education Center in a 1938 schoolhouse that had been moved from another part of the Willow Run complex. This had been the officers' club for the USAAF detachments stationed at Willow Run during the war, and was apparently the schoolhouse for the boys living at Henry Ford's Willow Run Farm (a social experiment that used the Willow Run site in 1939 and 1940 before the airfield and industrial complex were ever conceived).


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