| Michigan Flight Museum | |
| Map Type: | Michigan |
| Coordinates: | 42.239°N -83.5081°W |
| Former Name: | Yankee Air Museum |
| Location: | Willow Run Airport, Van Buren Township, Michigan, United States |
| Type: | Aviation museum |
| Founder: | Dennis E. Norton[1] |
| Director: | Kevin Walsh[2] |
| Curator: | Julie Osborne |
The Michigan Flight Museum, formerly known as the Yankee Air Museum, is an aviation museum located at Willow Run Airport in Van Buren Township, Michigan. The museum has a small fleet of flying aircraft and a collection of static display aircraft outdoors.
The Yankee Air Force Inc. was founded in 1981 to pursue these goals:[3]
The Yankee Air Force previously operated four divisions in addition to its home base:
On the night of October 9, 2004, the Yankee Air Museum's hangar on the northeast side of Willow Run Airport (KYIP) burned down.[6] The B-17, B-25 and C-47 were saved through heroic efforts by museum volunteers. The Stinson was at another hangar. Everything else inside the hangar was destroyed, including the original prototype North American YOV-10A Bronco, Waco CG-4A Glider, a former Thunderbirds Republic F-105, Aero L-39, Link Trainer, artifacts, spare parts, tools, and the museum's library.
Rebuilding plans were underway within days[7] and the museum's fundraising arm, the Michigan Aerospace Foundation, worked to replace the lost facility with a new, bigger, state-of-the-art aviation museum and aerospace facility.[8] [9] Ground was broken for a new museum building in April 2007. In 2008, the museum changed from a membership club to a director-driven organization with an 11-member board.
In 2009, the museum purchased a building from the Michigan Institute of Aviation and Technology (MIAT), on D Street to the east of the airfield, intending it as the new home of the museum collection.
In summer 2010, the museum opened the David and Andrea Robertson Education Center in a 1938 schoolhouse that had been moved from another part of the Willow Run complex. This had been the officers' club for the USAAF detachments stationed at Willow Run during the war,[10] and was apparently the schoolhouse for the boys living at Henry Ford's Willow Run Farm (a social experiment that used the Willow Run site in 1939 and 1940 before the airfield and industrial complex were ever conceived).
The museum reopened to the public on October 10, 2010, six years to the day after the fire.[11] [12] This allowed the museum to vacate Hangar Two, which was condemned by the Wayne County Airport Authority.
The museum became a Smithsonian Affiliate in July 2011.[13]
In April 2013, Yankee Air Museum and RACER Trust, owner of the former General Motors Willow Run plant, announced a plan for Yankee Air Museum to acquire a 175000square feet portion of the factory, contingent upon the museum raising the funds necessary to preserve and secure their proposed portion of the facility. The museum would consolidate operations scattered on various parcels at Willow Run Airport into the 1941 landmark, designed by Albert Kahn, with the trust seeking to clear the remainder of the plant for redevelopment. The plant was used during World War II to manufacture B-24 bombers.[14]
The campaign to save a portion of Willow Run for the Yankee Air Museum is called SaveTheBomberPlant.org, and is centered on a fundraising website by the same name.[15]
After extending the fundraising deadline to Oct. 1, and then to Nov. 1, 2013, on October 26, 2013, RACER Trust and the Yankee Air Museum again reached a new, and final, deadline extension agreement. The final deadline to raise the funds necessary to preserve a portion of the Willow Run plant for the Yankee Air Museum was May 1, 2014.[16]
At the time of the May 1, 2014 deadline, the Yankee Air Museum had raised over $7 million of its original $8 million fundraising goal, which was enough to enable the trust to move forward and sign a purchase agreement with Yankee, with the actual purchase expected to be finalized in late summer or fall of 2014.[17] The majority of the $8 million fundraising goal reflects separation costs to make the preserved portion of the plant viable as a standalone structure.
The remaining portion of the Willow Run complex, which includes over 95% of the historic building, has been sold to Walbridge, Inc., for redevelopment as a connected vehicle research and test facility. RACER Trust will demolish this portion of the building prior to turning the property over to Walbridge.[18] Preparations for demolition of Willow Run Assembly facility, with the exception of the portion that the Yankee Air Museum is campaigning to save, were well underway as of August 2014, with much of the building already demolished.
In October 2014 the museum announced that it is changing its name to the National Museum of Aviation and Technology at Historic Willow Run.[19]
With the planned decommissioning of Hangar 1, the museum was forced to find a new home for its flying collection. After initially considering a location adjacent to the Bomber Plant hangars, a site on the east side of the airport was selected for the Roush Aeronautics Center.[20] [21]
The museum changed its name to Michigan Flight Museum in May 2024.[22] The following month it announced the sale of its B-17.[23]
The Museum's Collections & Exhibits building covers 47000square feet of floor space and houses permanent and rotating aviation and historical displays, restoration projects, a retail store and a movie theatre that is available to the public. It is also home to museum staff and volunteers and has meeting rooms and banquet facilities for rent, machine shops and storage space for the museum collection. An outside area next to the museum is the new home of the air park.
From 2007 until August 2011, the Yankee Air Museum's flyable aircraft were hangared at the Township Airport at Grosse Ile, Michigan.[24]