National Naval Aviation Museum

06/12/2026

The iconic F-14 Tomcat on display at the museum's front entrance is getting a facelift! We look forward to it looking bright and shiny in the summer sun in the coming weeks.

06/12/2026

Rainy days make the perfect museum days! 🌧️✈️
Don't let the weather keep you at home this summer. Visit the National Naval Aviation Museum and enjoy a day of aviation history, interactive exhibits, and family-friendly fun, all indoors and all waiting for you.

06/12/2026

06/11/2026

Well-tailored in appearance with his shirt and tie, Lieutenant Theodore G. Ellyson (Naval Aviator Number One) sits in the cockpit of the "Flying Fish" on the waters of Lake Keuka in Hammondsport, New York, in 1912. Also known as Flying Boat Number 2, this was the first successful flying boat produced by Glenn Curtiss, the foundation for larger and more capable designs he delivered to the Navy in the ensuing years, which included the NC-4 that bridged the Atlantic. Note the forward elevators affixed to the bow. Ellyson's flight training was part of the deal when the Navy requisitioned its first aircraft from Curtiss. His training occurred at North Island in San Diego, where Curtiss had an encampment during the winter months, and Hammondsport. Why was Ellyson chosen as the first officer to undergo aviation training? He had submitted a request for assignment to flying duty alongside other officers and he happened to be on shore duty and available when the time came, a classic case of being at the right place and the right time!

06/11/2026

Enter for your chance to win a 2026 Range Rover Sport SE and support the mission of the National Naval Aviation Museum Foundation!
Every entry helps fund:
• New museum exhibits
• Historic aircraft restoration and preservation
• Operational support and capital improvements
• STEM education programs that inspire the next generation through the National Flight Academy and Flight Adventure Deck
Your support helps us honor the past while investing in the future of aviation education.
Enter today and you could be behind the wheel of this incredible 2026 Range Rover Sport SE: https://www.tapkat.org/naval-aviation-museum-foundation/m9mg6E?promo=INSTAGRAM&utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAdGRleASL9DBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA8xMjQwMjQ1NzQyODc0MTQAAafSVXUeXSDn1fizp0feaxys9QPAevx4GyiHkgJjmosjWNm2LTYN9EBs3iP-Lw_aem_NI3nMQ7cYDvtBfuuy-NqEg

06/11/2026

Celebrate the father or grandfather who has made a lasting impact. A personalized plaque on the National Naval Aviation Museum's Legacy Wall is a meaningful way to honor their story and preserve their legacy for future generations.

Order your plaque today at https://navalaviationfoundation.org/legacywall/

06/11/2026

"He had less than two months to train a fighting squadron out of a bunch of dive-bomber pilots."

In 1943, the South Pacific theater didn't care about your ideal training syllabus. When VMO-251 was suddenly handed a fleet of F4F Wildcats and told to hold Guadalcanal as a fighter squadron, their commander faced an impossible gap: most of his personnel were dive-bomber and torpedo pilots.

Major Renner didn't try to teach them complex, hyper-technical deflection gunnery in a matter of weeks. Instead, he picked the brains of surviving veterans and engineered an ultra-simple, aggressive tactical baseline: climb up high, get fast, boom-and-zoom, and get out.

By stripping away the noise and focusing purely on a brutal, repeatable mechanical advantage, a patch-work unit of bombers became an incredibly lethal fighter squadron almost overnight.

06/10/2026

This year the nation celebrates its 250th birthday and for 115 of those years Naval Aviation has been an enduring chapter of the American story. Follow us on social media as we pick something from our collection from every one of those 115 years, starting today with 1911.

In this photograph, officers and Sailors on board USS Pennsylvania (ACR 4) surround a Curtiss seaplane on the armored cruiser's deck. It is obviously an event of great interest! The mustachioed civilian standing next to the wood and fabric wings is none other than Glenn Curtiss, the manufacturer of some of the Navy's first "aeroplanes" as they were called at the time. While a pilot who flew as a member of his aerial exhibition team, Eugene Ely, made history landing an aircraft on a wooden deck erected on board Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay on January 18, 1911, that was not what convinced the Navy to order its first aircraft. That came a few weeks later, when Curtiss successfully demonstrated his aircraft could fly from the water with a single float in place of landing gear. As captured in this photograph, on February 17, 1911, he taxied out to Pennsylvania, was hoisted aboard, and then lowered into the water again to taxi back to North Island. This seemingly simple evolution was an additional demonstration of how seaplanes might operate in conjunction with seagoing vessels, leading to the signing of the requisitions ordering the Navy's first aircraft on May 8, 1911, which is considered the birthday of U.S.Naval Aviation.

06/10/2026

Naval Aviator Colonel Randy "Komrade" Bresnik, USMC (Ret.) will command the Artemis III space mission, which will conduct a series of tests in Earth orbit in preparation for the planned Artemis IV mission that will land astronauts on the lunar surface. Other crewmembers include Italian Air Force Colonel Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency, who will serve as pilot, and Mission Specialists Commander Andre Douglas, USCG, and Colonel Frank Rubio, USA.