CAF Airpower Museum
The CAF Airpower Museum, formerly the American Airpower Heritage Museum (AAHM), is affiliate organization of the Commemorative Air Force (CAF), headquartered at Dallas Executive Airport in Dallas, Texas. The museum opened in its first building in Mercedes, Texas, in 1965 as a location to house and display World War II artifacts as they began to be donated to the CAF. Both the CAF and AAHM moved to Harlingen, Texas, in 1968. In 1990, the AAHM became a separate non-profit organization, and in 1991 both the AAHM and CAF moved to Midland, Texas. In 2015, the museum's collection was moved to Dallas in anticipation of the creation of the new CAF National Airbase.[1]
Collections
The museum's collection, which numbers nearly 400,000 artifacts, focuses on the history of World War II military aviation culture and other material culture of this era. It has one of the most complete collections of World War II aviation culture in the United States with items that represent all of the axis and allies that participated in the air wars of World War II. The AAHM collects items, artifacts, and historical information of inherent value to World War II aviation and related culture, focusing on the period of 1939 - 1945.
Featured collections in the museum include:
- More than 4,900 oral histories collected from World War II Veterans of aviation
- The largest collection of original World War II nose art panels in the world [2]
- A library of more than 6,000 books, 13,000 periodicals, as well as newspapers, microfilm, and numerous technical and field manuals related to military aviation