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Yanks Air Museum, Chino, CA
Photo by John Shupek
The Yanks Air Museum, a - 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is focused exclusively on American aviation history and technology. The collection now numbers more than 120 aircraft and continues to grow. The scope of the collection covers the entire history of American aviation, from Jennies to Jets.
Some of the aircraft currently on display are the sole surviving example of its type, while many others are rare birds in that perhaps only a precious few of that type exist today.
The present location of The Yanks Air Museum is the Chino Airport in Chino, California where it has enjoyed steady growth over the past two decades. Located some 50 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, the museum is conveniently located in the nations largest metroplex, providing a huge local audience. Additionally, Chino Airport is well recognized as one of the centers of aircraft restoration and preservation with several different companies that provide those services co-located on the airport property.
The museum aircraft have been restored in-house with great attention to detail so that both flying and static aircraft are considered exemplary examples of their type. Great care and effort has been made to conform to the original manufacturer's specifications in all restoration projects.
The existing museum campus extends over 5½ acres and includes 76,600 square feet of display, restoration, and storage buildings with additional open-air storage areas. Steady growth of the museum has inspired future plans to expand the Chino facility to accommodate additional aircraft, artifacts and a multi-media education center.
In recent years great steps have been taken to continue the museums acquisition of exhibit aircraft as well as to assemble additional features and programs that will support the display, education and entertainment goals of the museum. These features include continued expansion of the Reference Library as well as major additions to the Photo Archive Collection. More recently, Yanks Air Museum has acquired for display a very impressive collection of scale models that reflect the history of the first half-century of aviation. A large collection of aviation related artifacts have been gathered from all areas American aviation history.
1930 Aeronca C-2 (NC647W)
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1927 American Eagle A-1 (N4289)
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1951 Bell OH-13E "Sioux" (51-14175)
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1942 Bell P-39N "Airacobra" (42-8740)
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1942 Bell P-63A-7-BE King Cobra "Fatal Fang" (N94501, AF 42-69080)
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1973 Bellanca 17-31ATC "Super Viking" (N93669)
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1930 Brunner-Winkle Bird BK (NC731Y)
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World War II AN-M65 1000 Lb. Bomb
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Canadair CL-13B Sabre Mk.6 (N3842H)
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Cessna Model AW "West Wind III" (NC8782)
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In 1926, the Arkansas Aircraft Company was founded in Little Rock to build small personal airplanes. The company represented the first and one of the few aircraft companies that have existed in Arkansas. The Arkansas Aircraft Company, which later became known as Command-Aire, was nationally known for its aircraft, and it was one of the country’s leading airplane manufacturers in the late 1920s.
Robert B. Snowden Jr. was the Company’s president, and John Carroll Cone was in charge of sales. Albert Voellmecke—a graduate of the University of Braunschweigaud in Germany and an employee of the Heinkel firm, a noted German aircraft builder—was sent to America by the Heinkel firm in 1927 to advise the company. He later became the company’s chief designer.
The new company occupied the former Climber Motor Car Factory at 1823 East 17th Street in Little Rock, which was the perfect facility for its needs. The building’s large, open interior space was ideal for airplane construction. Additionally, the large amount of land (more than twenty acres) allowed the company to construct runways for its planes. The runways became known as Command-Aire Field. The company had two runways at the facility: a 1,800-foot-long, 150-foot-wide runway running north-south between 17th and 21st streets and a 1,600-foot-long, 150-foot-wide runway running northwest-southeast located south of the factory.
The company initially manufactured a version of the German Heinkel HD-40. After improving the design, however, the company reorganized and changed its name to Command-Aire around the year 1928. The planes were targeted at trainers and private owners, and the Command-Aire Corporation was one of the nation’s leading aircraft manufacturers. The Command-Aire 3C3 had a range of 440 miles, a cruising speed of eighty-five miles per hour, and a price of $3,350. The Command-Aire 5C3 had a range of 500 miles, a cruising speed of 123 m.p.h., and a price of $6,325. A typical Command-Aire plane featured a fuselage and tail of welded steel tubing, wood-frame wings, fabric covering, and rubber cord shock absorbers. To keep costs low, early models did not have brakes or tail wheels. Command-Aire sold more than 300 planes before the Depression hurt its sales. The company was never able to recover and closed by early 1931. Today, the factory remains at 1823 East 17th Street in Little Rock and is still used as an industrial facility, although the runways no longer exist.
Although the company remained in business only from 1926 until 1931, the planes built by the company were well known, especially after the All-America Flying Derby. The 5,541-mile race, which began on July 21, 1930, in Detroit and ended eleven days later, featured overnight control stops in Buffalo, New York; New York City; Cincinnati, Ohio; Little Rock; Houston, Texas; San Angelo, Texas; Douglas, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; Ogden, Utah; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Chicago, Illinois, before returning to Detroit. The race’s purpose was to demonstrate the feasibility of long-distance flight by light airplanes. Lee Gehlbach, piloting a specially built Command-Aire plane named the “Little Rocket,” which flew at an average speed of 127.11 m.p.h., won the race. His prize was $15,000, a tremendous amount of money during the Depression. Command-Aire planes were also well known for being one of only two designs to pass the 1929 Guggenheim Safety Trial, in which all existing aircraft designs were test-flown and judged for safety.
Convair F-106B-31-CO Delta Dart (AF 57-2513)
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The Convair F-106 Delta Dart was the primary all-weather interceptor aircraft for the United States Air Force from the 1960s through the 1980s. Designed as the so-called "Ultimate Interceptor", it has proven to be the last dedicated interceptor in USAF service to date. It was gradually retired during the 1980s, although the QF-106 drone conversions of the aircraft were used until 1998.
The Convair F-106 Delta Dart emerged from the USAF's 1954 interceptor program of the early 1950s as an advanced derivative of the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger known as the Convair F-102B, for which the United States Air Force placed an order for in November 1955. The aircraft featured so many modifications and design changes it became a new design in its own right, redesignated F-106 on 17 June 1956.
The major change was to an area ruled fuselage, enabling supersonic speed in level flight. In addition, the Convair F-106 Delta Dart featured a more powerful J-75 afterburning turbojet with enlarged intake diameter to compensate for the increased airflow requirements and a variable geometry inlet duct, which allowed the aircraft improved performance particularly at supersonic speeds, as well as permitting a shorter inlet duct. The fuselage was cleaned up and simplified in many ways featuring a modified, slightly enlarged wing area and a redesigned vertical tail surface. The aircraft's exhaust nozzle featured a device known as an idle thrust reducer, which allowed taxiing without the jet blast blowing unsecured objects around, without adversely affecting performance at high thrust levels, including afterburners. The fuselage was also slightly longer than the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger.
Initial flight tests at the end of 1956 and beginning of 1957 were disappointing, with performance much less than anticipated, but after nearly abandoning the program, the Air Force decided to order 350 Convair F-106 Delta Darts instead of the planned 1,000. After some minor redesign, the new aircraft, designated Convair F-106A were delivered to 15 fighter interceptor squadrons along with the Convair F-106B two-seat combat-capable trainer variant, starting in October 1959.
F-106B — Two-seat, combat-capable training version. Pilot and instructor are seated in tandem. Due to the extra seat, the fuselage is actually better area ruled; combined with a likely reduction in weight, this increased the top speed by Mach 0.1. Maximum speed was at least Mach 2.6, with some estimates as high as Mach 2.95. Many were fitted with the conically cambered wing, improving the supersonic lift to drag ratio. The F-106A and the F-106B carried the same weapon loads.
Curtiss "Jennys"(World War I)
Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" (no skin)
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USN Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" (A-996)
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Curtiss P-4D "Jenny" (no skin)
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Aircraft On Display
