Air Force Museum storage hangar filled with exciting artifacts you can't see until you take the Behind the Scenes Tour @AFmuseum @DaytonDailyNews - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA
About a half-mile east of the Museum, the restoration and storage hangars sit at the bottom of the hill in Area B of the base, where they are not accessible to the public.
Giant window-filled motorized doors cover the front of each hangar. Inside, natural light reveals aircraft of all types in various states of existence.
Here are seven cool things that are stories in those buildings:
PHOTOS: Behind the scenes where the Air Force Museum stores aircraft
McDonnell Douglas F-15 Streak Eagle
This fighter jet was the first U.S. fighter to have more thrust than the jet weighed, meaning it could accelerate in a climb – and the Streak Eagle at the Museum did just that.
With no paint and no armaments and lacking many other things combat aircraft carry, the last of the eight time-to-climb records it broke went like this: From brake release on the runway to 98,425 feet above the earth in a mere 3 minutes, 27.8 seconds. The jet then coasted higher to 103,000 feet before descending.
» RELATED: Air Force Museum sees boost in attendance since new hangar opened
Convair Atlas rocket
The rocket was the first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile in the Strategic Air Command and was later used as an Air Force space booster for the Mercury Astronaut launches. This giant silver tube is constructed of stainless steel and must be pressurized to keep its shape. The Atlas in the storage hangar is kept under pressure on its original transport trailer. It is 75 feet in length and 10 feet in diameter.
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Douglas twin bombers
OK, more like fraternal twin bombers. In 1944, Douglas Aircraft Company delivered the XB-42 Mixmaster bomber that could outperform the four-engine B-29 Superfortress with two engines and a much smaller wingspan.
The Army Air Corps was impressed by the plane but was looking toward jet power as the future of bombers. Not to be deterred, Douglas upgraded the XB-42 to the YB-43 Jetmaster. The YB-43 was nicknamed Versatile II after replacing one of the two General Electric J35 turbojet engines with a General Electric J47 jet. Both planes are sitting side-by-side in the storage hangar with their respective parts.
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Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat
The Soviet-built MiG-25RB Foxbat in the restoration hangar was found buried in the sand in Iraq by the U.S. Army in 2003. It belonged to the Iraqi Air Force and saw combat as a reconnaissance platform in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988.
The MiG-25 is the second-fastest jet in the world, behind the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, and was built as an interceptor, presumably to deter the XB-70 Valkyrie mach 3 bomber, which resides in the Museum. The MiG-25’s airframe was built around two massive Tumansky R-15 turbojets that allowed for routine mach 2-plus speeds and dash speeds past mach 3. Sand can still be seen in the jet nozzles of the Museum’s MiG.
» PHOTOS: New $40.8M hangar opens at Air Force Museum
Hawker-Beechcraft MC-12W Liberty
The Hawker-Beechcraft MC-12W Liberty is a specialized aircraft put together with a commercially available business class King Air turboprop platform, sensors and communication equipment. Flying at low and medium altitudes over Iraq and Afghanistan, MC-12 crews spotted more than 650 enemy weapons caches and aided in stopping more than 8,000 terrorists.
Liberty crews flew more than 400,000 combat hours helping ground troops find enemy forces and avoid Improvised Explosive Devices. In 2016, the mission moved to the U.S. Army.
» PHOTO GALLERY: Details of the restoration, storage artifacts
Boeing X-32A Joint Strike Fighter
The Boeing X-32A Joint Strike Fighter concept demonstrator was the company’s entry into a competition for a fighter aircraft that could be used across the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. X-32A was built to take-off and land like conventional aircraft. It’s sibling X-32B was designed for short take-off and vertical landing.
The large and cartoonish-looking air intake on the front of the X-32 was necessary to feed a very air-hungry engine in slow or hover flight. The Department of Defense chose Lockheed-Martin’s X-35 design which is now the F-35 Lightning II, but Boeing says the X-32 design yielded important advances used in other aircraft like the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
Boeing B-17D Flying Fortress ‘The Swoose’
Two of the most famous Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses from World War II will soon be on display inside the museum. But for now, they are deep into restoration.
B-17F Memphis Belle and B-17D Swoose share adjoining restoration hangars. The B-17D is the oldest Flying Fortress to survive the war and sports a much sleeker look than the Belle. In 1942, the tail of another B-17D replaced its original, leading to the nickname Swoose from a line "half swan, half goose: Alexander is a swoose." in a popular song Alexander the Swoose.
» MEMPHIS BELLE: Photo gallery of the restoration
»Behind the Scenes Tours: At the National Museum of the United States Air Force
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