Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson has over 200 acres, more than five giant hangars, and over 275 aircraft on display. As the largest non-government aviation museum and with 125,000 artifacts, there's hardly another place like it for exploring military, commercial, and civil aviation heritage. From the popular B-24 Superfortress, SR-71 Blackbird, and rare WWII German V-1 "buzz bomb" to the smallest airplane, the "BumbleBee" (pictured), the giant PBM-Mariner seaplane (pictured) and more recent Kennedy/Johnson Air Force One (pictured), this museum has something for everyone. We took the outdoor tram tour with a very knowledgeable guide who provided insights into a vast array of aircraft, such as what it was used for, any well-known figures who had flown it, what the pilots thought of the craft (sometimes not very highly!), what some pitfalls were, etc. Pima Air has a few planes that are one-of-a-kind, for example, a F-107 designed and built for the military by North American to travel at Mach 2, but which lost the bid to Republic's F-105 due to a slightly better design. While we were at the museum, also touring were a group of former Tuskegee Airmen, who were America's first and only all-Black military aviators.
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