New Hampshire Military History Museums

Set in the relocated 1937 terminal and control tower of what is now Manchester–Boston Regional Airport, the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire offers a concentrated look at how aviation developed in a small New England state and fed into wider American air power. The preserved terminal building itself, moved to 27 Navigator Road on the airport’s east side and enlarged in 2011, anchors the story: early commercial and civil aviation infrastructure that paralleled the old Manchester and Lawrence Railroad, marking a shift from rail to air as the primary vector of movement and, eventually, military logistics. Operated by the New Hampshire Aviation Historical Society, the museum focuses on documenting pilots, aircraft, and industries with state connections, placing figures such as Alan Shepard, Joseph C. McConnell, and Harrison Thyng in their regional context rather than as isolated national icons. For military history enthusiasts, the value lies less in spectacle than in tracing how local airfields, training activities, and aviation culture created a human and technical pipeline that fed the U.S. services across the twentieth century and into the jet and space ages.

For those interested in the military dimensions of aerospace history, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord ties New Hampshire’s local story to the broader arc of Cold War and postwar defense technology. Dedicated to Christa McAuliffe and Alan Shepard, the center anchors two distinct yet related narratives: the civilianization of spaceflight and the military test-pilot culture that helped create it. Shepard, a Navy test pilot before becoming the first American in space and later a moonwalker, represents the close interweaving of naval aviation, rocketry, and early human spaceflight. Outside, the full-sized replica of a Mercury-Redstone rocket and the 1:1 Mercury capsule model provide a tangible sense of the engineering scale behind the first U.S. manned launches, a program rooted in ballistic missile development. The on-loan 1956 Vought XF8U-2 jet from the National Naval Aviation Museum further situates the site within the evolution of high-performance carrier aviation during the jet age. Taken together, the artifacts and context offer a compact study in how military research, test flying, and strategic imperatives shaped the technologies that later defined human space exploration.

A World War II museum with a large focus on the American homefront, along with a modest vehicle gallery. There is a Stuart tank breaching through an exterior wall, and inside there's a Sherman tank, multiple trucks and wheeled vehicles, and even a WWII veteran Pershing tank.