March Air Reserve Museum
To kill some time while waiting to visit relatives, I decided to visit the March Air Reserve Base Museum in RIverside, California. While it isn’t a huge museum like Dayton, it has a ton of character and most of it’s exhibits are on display outside next to the reserve airbase field itself AND there are no barriers or fenses separating visitors from the planes themselves. This makes it a unique experience, even for someone like me that has visited dozens of air museums around the states.
One of the cool exhibits for me was this T6-Texan. A plane with considerable history and one that I’ve actually personally flown out of Winchester
. The P-51 Mustang may be the plane most folks associate with WW2, but something about the shape of the T6-Texan to me opitimizes fighters of that era in a similar way.
The museum team put a lot of effort into some of the display areas to try and recreate the atmosphere of the period. The Vietnam firebase recreation complete with command post, guard tower, and all of the Air Cav helicopters of the era was pretty cool to see and roam around in.
One fairly new addition to the museum is a radio collection that spans many generations. It’s very much worth popping in and checking out if you have the time. The docents are knowledgeable and friendly and well, they have AC so it’s a chance to get a break from the heat.
The full gallery of photos from my visit can be viewed at the link below.
Right next door to March Air Reserve Base and the museum is the Riverside National Cemetary. I took the opportunity to stop by and pay respects at the National Medal of Honor Memorial.
