Florence Air & Missile Museum

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The Florence Air & Missile Museum was a large aviation museum which was located at the entrance to the Florence Regional Airport (FLO), in Florence, South Carolina.

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[edit] History

This airport was original known as Florence Field,[1] a WWII U.S. Army Air Corps training field for A-26 Invader attack aircraft. Because of its former military connection, and its excellent runways, the military was able to fly in aircraft and leave them at the Museum as their were retired from service. This enabled the Museum to build a very large collection. The Museum built up a large collection of WWII and Cold War era US Military aircraft and space hardware.

The Museum was located on the main road from Florence to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. As a result, the museum enjoyed a large number of visitors (up to 300,000 per year) until I-95 was built. Once the Interstate was built, the number of visitors began a steady decline. As the visitors began to decline, the appearance of the museum began to deteriorate.

[edit] Closure

In the 1996/1997 time frame the airport wanted to build a new entrance and decided to close the museum with little advance notice. The Museum was closed in December 1997.

The valuable and rare collection was quickly picked over by various museums in the United States and most of it was scattered outside the state of South Carolina. Today there is no aviation museum in South Carolina which is anywhere near the size of the Florence Museum.

[edit] Aircraft & missiles in the collection

This is only a partial listing of known museum pieces.

[edit] Aircraft transferred

[edit] Aircraft with unkown disposition

[edit] References

  1. ^ Army Air Corp Fields

[edit] See also