In 2016, the museum opened its 224,000 square foot fourth building, bringing its size to 1,120,000 sqft. In 2010, the museum launched its 360-degree Virtual Tour, allowing most aircraft and exhibits to be viewed online.
Among them is the Apollo 15 Command Module Endeavour which orbited the Moon 74 times in 1971, one of four surviving Convair B-36 Peacemakers, the only surviving North American XB-70 Valkyrie and Bockscar-the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki during the last days of World War II. The museum's collection contains many rare aircraft of historical or technological importance, and various memorabilia and artifacts from the history and development of aviation. The museum is a central component of the National Aviation Heritage Area.
The former name, United States Air Force Museum, changed to National Museum of the United States Air Force. The museum announced a new name for the facility in October 2004. Not including its annex on Wright Field proper, the museum has more than tripled in square footage since 1971, with the addition of a second hangar in 1988, a third in 2003, and a fourth in 2016. Her "determination, logic and meticulous attention" kept it on track, and the current facility opened in 1971. When he died in 1969, his widow Virginia took over the project. Through the 1960s, Eugene Kettering, son of Charles F. Kettering, led the project to build a permanent structure to house the collections and became the first chairman of the board of the Air Force Museum Foundation. Many of its aircraft were parked outside and exposed to the weather. In 1954, the Air Force Museum became public and was housed in its first permanent facility, Building 89 of the former Patterson Field in Fairborn, which had been an engine overhaul hangar. In 1948, the collection remained private as the Air Force Technical Museum. In 1932, the collection was named the Army Aeronautical Museum and placed in a WPA building from 1935 until World War II. In 1927, it moved to then- Wright Field in a laboratory building. The museum dates to 1923, when the Engineering Division at Dayton's McCook Field first collected technical artifacts for preservation.
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