While in LA for the Naval Gazing meetup, the group went to the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance. It's a small, obscure museum that I hadn't even known about until a friend recommended it during the last LA meetup, but it seemed like a good thing to do on Friday as an appetizer before the battleship on Saturday.
The museum's party piece
The museum is at the Torrance Airport, which is somewhat irritating to get to, given its distance from the freeways. And while it makes some attempt to chronicle the rich history of airplane production in greater LA, it started as Northrop's house museum, and that very much shows in the planes they have and what part of the story they are most interested in telling. The site is absurdly small, with only five jets on display and not really room for any more: a rather pretty F-86, a two-seat Harrier trainer (which may not be there long, but I'm sure they can find something to replace it), an early A4D-1 Skyhawk, and two Northrop products, an ex-Norwegian F-5 and one of two YF-23 prototypes, the other one of which is at Dayton. (Various places talk about an F-14 and a YF-17, but these appear to be parked elsewhere on the airport.) They did have a fairly large collection of models, engines, and so on to pad the museum out, including an R-4360 that was on Spruce Goose at one point.
Me in the cockpit of the F-5
But two things elevated the museum past "moderately good regional air museum, I guess", which is more or less what the collection points at. First, the docents were friendly and helpful to a fault, and there was a time or two I had to gently shoo them away so I could talk with the rest of the group. If I had been by myself, that would have made the experience significantly better than average, and likewise for visitors without an aviation background. Second, the museum is one of the more accessible I've been to, a particular highlight being the F-5. The docents will let you get into the cockpit under supervision, and then walk you through what you are looking at in a surprising amount of detail. This actually proved a problem when we dumped 11 people on them in short order, because their spiels seemed to be calibrated on getting a couple visitors an hour, and a lot of us wanted a turn. They do the same thing with a BD-5 nearby, although be aware that I am about average size for a guy, and I found that very, very tight.
Inside the museum
On the whole, I think the Western Museum of Flight is probably my favorite LA-area air museum, beating out Planes of Fame and Lyons.1 Unlike those museums, they don't fly their planes, which lets them focus on the museum aspects, and they've executed on those pretty well. I'm not sure I'd include it on my itinerary if I was coming in from out of town, but it was a nice way to get out of the house during the meetup.
1 Neither of which I have reviewed here because they didn't leave strong enough impressions to make a meaningful review after most of a decade. They were both OK, but neither one blew me away. ⇑
Comments
I have been to Lyons, larger than the museum you are writing about. Their claim to fame is a few Mercedes Benz vehicles from WW II that Hitler rode in. Nearby is a car musuem which has some serious hardware. To me that is as impresssive as Lyons.