The Douglas SBD Dauntless served as America’s principal dive bomber for most of WWII; it accounted for more enemy shipping than any other aircraft type in history. Recovered from its wartime crash site in Lake Michigan during 1995, our SBD is presently under restoration to flying condition.
Originally designed to provide enhanced fire-direction for U.S. Navy Battleships, the Kingfisher could handle many tasks, from reconnaissance to search-and-rescue. Although the type has now slipped into obscurity, it was one of WWII’s great un-sung heroes.
A highly maneuverable fighter aircraft, the Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa played a key role during numerous Imperial Japanese Army engagements during WWII. Western pilots often mistook the type for a Mitsubishi A6M during combat, leading to the type being dubbed the “Army Zero” by some, although “Oscar” was its formal reporting name. Presently unfinished, our Oscar is based upon the remains of four wartime wrecks recovered from the Kuril Islands by the late Doug Champlin during the 1990s.
Believed to be a license-built Messerschmitt Bf 109 following initial encounters, the Ki-61 was the only mass-produced Japanese fighter of WWII which featured a liquid-cooled engine. The type first saw combat over Yokohama during the Doolittle Raid of April 1942, but it went on to prove a menace against American B-29s later in the war. The Museum’s example, recovered from New Guinea during 1975, is presently in storage awaiting restoration.
Designed not as a weapon system, like the U.S. Navy’s TDN-series Assault Drones, but rather as a radio-controlled target drone, the Culver PQ-14 was sufficiently large for a human pilot to fly it from one location to another. The cockpit accommodations could be described as rudimentary at best, of course, with the pilot expected to…
Dubbed “The F-16 of its time” by noted historian Dan Hagedorn, the Hawk 75 had great success as an export fighter, with many of America’s pre-war allies obtaining them to bolster their fleets. Our Hawk 75 flew with the Finnish Air Force between 1942 and 1943, with some 17 aces flying it during that time, shooting down ten Soviet aircraft from its cockpit.
Known to many as the ‘Bamboo Bomber’ due to its largely wooden construction, the Bobcat played a vital role in training multi-engine aircraft pilots during WWII.
A development of Bell Aircraft’s P-39 Airacobra, the P-63 Kingcobra featured the same unusual, mid-engine configuration, tricycle undercarriage and nose-mounted 37mm cannon. While the U.S. Army Air Forces chose not to field P-63s in combat, the Soviet Air Force received more than 2,300 examples late in WWII.