The history of military aviation, much like the history of aviation generally, began with the Wright Brothers. Orville Wright developed the Wright Military Flyer just five years after the original Wright Flyer. Unfortunately, the first military plane was also responsible for the first fatal plane crash. Army observer Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge was riding as a passenger when Orville crashed the Military Flier, killing Selfridge and severely injuring himself. The deadly history of military aviation continued as planes were used in the First World War for both combat and reconnaissance. By the time of the Second World War, dominating air space had become the decisive factor in projecting political power around the globe. In 1947, the United States Military established the Air Force as a separate branch of the armed forced, cementing the role of aviation in the deadly business of armed conflict. The growing importance of military aviation was mirrored by the increasing military presence in this building. The Army Air Corps, and later Air Force, slowly took over operations from the Municipal Airport until 1954, when the Air Force took over this location entirely. As the first admission building for the air base, this building was quickly militarized, and was only restored to the airport layout when it was converted into a museum.

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was a bomber that came to define US air power during The Second World War. The four-engine propeller plane was developed in 1942, and quickly replaced the B-17 as the favored bomber of the Army Air Corps. Manufacturing B-29s was such an enormous undertaking that Boeing Wichita’s push to churn out bombers is sometimes called The Battle of Wichita. Boeing Wichita was on a 24 hour schedule, and the cafeteria quickly became Kansas’s largest restaurant. By the end of the war, the plant had manufactured 1,644 B29 bombers. This massive feat required help from the entire region. Workers were bussed in from surrounding communities just to ensure a fresh supply workers. Many of the men and women ended up settling in Wichita. In fact, Wichita’s population nearly doubled by the end of the war. In 1945, a B-29 named the Enola Gay delivered the only two nuclear bombs ever dropped as an act of war. This solidified the B-29’s reputation as a notorious bomber able to unleash a brand new caliber of death and destruction.

The Boeing B-47 Stratojet was developed in the post-WWII nuclear age. The main mission of the B-47 was to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union and its citizens. However, design challenges kept the B-47 from being implemented in large numbers. The bomber used a swept-wing design developed by Nazi laboratories, and jet engine technology that had yet to be successfully incorporated into a heavy bomber. The jet engines were originally not strong enough for a fully loaded B-47 to take off one its own power. To remedy this, the Air Force used Rocket Assisted Take-Off (RATO) to get its new bombers of the ground on short runways. Even with workarounds such as these, the Air Force lost almost 10% of all B-47s ever produced to crashes.  As jet engine technology improved, RATO was no longer necessary, but by that time the B-52 was being implemented as the new nuclear bomber. B-47s continued to be used by the Strategic Air Command (SAC) for weather and atmosphere testing. The B-47 here at the Kansas Aviation museum was used by SAC for measuring radioactivity in the atmosphere.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress came to define nuclear tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. With a 185 foot wingspan, this 8 engine behemoth is larger than the entire distance of the Wright Brothers’ original 120 foot flight. The nuclear capabilities of the B-52 ensured that the bomber was a Cold War mainstay. B-52s were used extensively in the 1972 Linebacker II campaign, which dropped 20,000 pounds of conventional bombs on North Vietnam. The B-52 here at the Kansas Aviation Museum flew its last mission over North Vietnam in 1973, and is still painted in the color scheme used for the undeclared wars of Southeast Asia. The plane was permanently grounded as part of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between the US and the USSR. The SALT treaties limited the means by which nuclear bombs could be delivered, such as Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) and heavy bombers. The treaty did not limit the number of nuclear weapons, however. There are still over 12,000 warheads on earth. Though nuclear disarmament has a long way to go, this plane stands as proof that peace treaties between the world’s most militaristic empires are achievable.

Aerial Refueling was first used by the US Army Air Service in 1923. Since then the US military has honed the art of fueling planes in the sky to eliminate the need to land. Many planes today use a ‘flying boom’ system, in which a rigid pipe called the ‘boom’ is extended in order to pump fuel from one plane to the other. The first flying booms were modifications made to B-29s. The true first tanker design was a Boeing KC-97, but the propeller driven 97s struggled to keep up with the jet engine planes. In 1954, the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker was released. The jet tankers were used extensively to refuel F-105s, F-4s and B-52s throughout the Cold War and conflicts in Southeast Asia. Though KC-135 are still in use, the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus is quickly becoming the preferred tanker for the US military. KC-46s allows for the boom operator to sit in the cockpit and guide the refueling arm with virtual reality rather than laying down in the back of the plane. Refueling is the main mission of McConnell Air Force Base, and KC-46s regularly take-off from the runways that once served this building when it was an airport.

McConnell Air Force Base was named after Fred and Thomas McConnell, two brothers who had both been pilots during the Second World War. During the push to manufacture B-29s, the US military started a slow takeover of the Wichita Municipal Airport. In 1954, the US Air Force purchased Wichita Municipal from the city of Wichita. At that time this building became the administrative building for the base. Even before commercial air travel in Wichita moved to Midcontinent Airport (ICT) in 1954, the Air Force began extensive B-47 testing at this location. The base housed tactical fighters during the wars in Southeast Asia. In 1971, with the arrival of the 91st Air Refueling Squadron (ARS) and their KC-135s, McConnell began to focus on aerial refueling. By the mid1980s, the Air Force base had moved its administrative offices, and abandoned this building to the pigeons. In 1989, a dedicated group of volunteers began removing the maze of military office that had been added to the building. In 1991, with the building restored to look like the original Wichita Municipal Airport, the Kansas Aviation Museum opened its doors to the public.