Pima Air Museum

The Pima Air Museum is located in Tucson near Davis Monthan Air Force Base. The museum is non-govt. supported and charges a fee for entry. They have over 300 historical aircraft from WWII to the present with several rare one of a kind aircraft. We took a narrated walking tour of four of the huge hangars and then a narrated tram tour of the 300 acres of outdoor display.

This is a WWII era Martin PBM flying boat and it is HUGE!

This is a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Reconnaissance plane which still holds many speed records for manned aircraft.

This is a Consolidated B-24 heavy bomber, WWII era.

Waist and ball-turret guns on the B-24. Hard to believe there was a gunner inside that tiny ball turret.

This is a B-25 Mitchell light bomber of the type that Jimmy Dolittle flew off a carrier to bomb Tokyo early in WWII

A beautiful restoration of a P-51 Mustang.

Many people believe this Lockheed Constellation was the most beautiful airliner ever built.

This modified Boeing 707 is also know as the "Vomit Comet" used to demonstrate weightlessness while flying the profile painted on the nose section.

This is one of only four remaining B-36 heavy bombers. The six pusher prop engines weren't enough to take off so the 2 jet engines per wing were added.

This is a restored B-17 part of the 390th bomber group memorial. This is a museum within the main museum.

Looking forward in the B-17 showing the waist guns and the top of the ball-turret.

Looking aft in the B-17 towards the tail gunner position.

Head on view of the B-17 showing the 4 .50 caliber machine guns facing forward. All together, there are 12 of these on the B-17.

Another view of the Constellation.

We spent over 3 hours at the museum and we had lunch in their new flight cafeteria. There is also a gift shop. On week-days, they run tours of the "Bone Yard" at Davis Monthan AFB where thousands of decommissioned aircraft are stored in the dry desert for possible sale and used for spare parts.