Arkansas Air & Military Museum

Housed in a cavernous 1940s wooden hangar at Drake Field—a surviving World War II-era military aviation training facility—the Arkansas Air & Military Museum preserves a cross-section of American air power and regional service history under a single, aging roof structure. The hangar itself, listed on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places, reflects wartime expedience in its timber engineering and has become a preservation challenge as much as an artifact. Inside, aircraft span from interwar “Golden Age” racers to Cold War and Vietnam-era machines, including trainers, attack aircraft, and helicopters such as the Bell AH-1 Cobra and UH-1 Huey, set alongside a Lockheed C-130 Hercules once operated by the Arkansas Air National Guard. Engines from early Curtiss designs to later Rolls-Royce and Westinghouse powerplants show the evolution of propulsion in concrete form. Military vehicles, small arms, uniforms, and fragments of a Mitsubishi A6M Zero broaden the context beyond American equipment. Biographical exhibits on Arkansan aviators, including Field Kindley, Richard Covey, Pierce McKennon, and Louise Thaden, tie global conflicts and aviation milestones back to northwest Arkansas.