New England Air Museum - Windsor Locks, Connecticut

The New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut is an absorbing trip through time and technology. Visitors learn about man’s experience with flight from the earliest attempts, and view enormous modern day aircraft in an impressive array of displays.

Owned and operated by the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association, a private, non-profit educational institution organized in 1959, the first of the Museum's existing five buildings (Civil, Military, 58th Bomb Wing Memorial and Restoration Hangar and storage building) was erected in 1981. More than 80 aircraft are exhibited here, accompanied by an extensive collection of engines, instruments, aircraft parts, uniforms and personal memorabilia.

Here you’ll find the last remaining four-engine American flying boat, the Sikorsky VS-44A, donated by its previous owner, actress Maureen O'Hara and restored to original condition. Here there is a massive B-29 Bomber; the Silas Brooks Balloon Basket (1870), the oldest surviving aircraft in the United States; the Bunce-Curtiss Pusher (1912), the oldest surviving Connecticut-built airplane; the Sikorsky S-39, the oldest surviving Sikorsky aircraft; and a Kaman K-225 helicopter, the oldest surviving Kaman-built aircraft.

There are reproductions of the famous GeeBee planes of the Granville Brothers of Springfield, Massachusetts, and the sister plane to the last plane flown by Amelia Earhart. There are exhibits on the Tuskegee Airmen, the Flying Tigers, a DC-3 Airliner. You can try your hand at a computer flight simulator which puts you over Bradley International Airport, or Logan, or LaGuardia -- virtually, of course.

There are special exhibits on Connecticut’s contribution to aviation, including Pratt & Whitney, the Sikorsky exhibit, and the 58th Bomb Wing of World War II Memorial. 

For more on the New England Air Museum, have a look at this website.