Air-Minded: CAF Museum Photoblog

Our son, who lives in Las Vegas, turned 50 last week. Since he had to be in Phoenix yesterday for a business meeting, we drove up to have dinner with him. I’ve been wanting to visit the Commemorative Air Force Museum at Falcon Field in Mesa, so we left Tucson in the morning and spent part of the afternoon there.

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Selfie with a Stinson Reliant

The CAF is a national organization dedicated to preserving and flying warbirds, primarily WWII aircraft. Chapters, each with its own aircraft, are located at airfields around the country. At one time CAF stood for Confederate Air Force … unlike some sports teams, organizers saw which was the wind was blowing and changed the name, probably 20 years ago now.

The chapter in Mesa is more of a maintenance and operations facility than a museum. By operations, of course, I mean flying: you can arrange a ride on any of several aircraft in their collection. Of course you can also just ogle the airplanes, as we did.

Here are a few photos from yesterday. You can click on the individual photos to see the full sized originals on Flickr. You can also click here to view my full CAF Museum album.

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F4N front cockpit

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MiG-15

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C-47

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Stinson Reliant cockpit

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P-51

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Lockheed Vega

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B-25

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B-17

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