Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum - Pueblo, Colorado
N 38° 16.965 W 104° 29.759
13S E 544081 N 4237307
An aircraft museum with some relatively rare and classic aircraft.
Waymark Code: WM3E1Q
Location: Colorado, United States
Date Posted: 03/21/2008
Views: 52
I landed at Pueblo airport after a short flight from Denver and walked outside to retrieve my rental car. What should I see but several relics of my very young childhood - the classic Lockheed Neptune and the equally venerable Fairchild Boxcar. My father worked briefly for Lockheed back in the late 1950s in Marietta, Georgia (after being laid off from the Avro Arrow Project in Canada, but that's another story). As a young lad of 5 years old, I used to see Neptunes frequently. They come from that strange era of piston engines supplemented by jet engines as an afterthought. So the Neptune had two burnin' and two turnin', as they used to say. It was used for maritime reconnaissance - it had a 'stinger' hanging out the tail that contained a device for tracking submarines. That device was a 'MAD", a magnetic anomaly detector. Supposedly it could detect minor variations in the earth's magnetosphere as might be caused by a large metallic object - such as a submarine! Eventually the Neptune was replaced by the Lockheed P3 Orion.
The Flying Boxcar is practically an icon, for those of us who were there. And they have a Piasecki/Vertol Flying Banana, the ancestor of the tandem rotor helicopters - the Vertol Sea Knight and the Chinook. My father left Lockheed to go to work for Boeing Vertol in Philadelphia, where he spent most of his career designing helicopter avionics. Upon retirement, he did some work for the famous helicopter pioneer Frank Piasecki. Frank sold his helicopter business to Boeing back in the late 1950s. His daughter works for Boeing in Seattle, last I heard.
The Museum also has several 'experiments' from the nearby railroad test center - one was powered by a linear induction motor and another one that 'floated' on an air cushion.
All in all, this is a gem of a museum - who knew?
Museum Name: Pueblo Weisbrod Aircraft Museum
Museum Web Address: [Web Link]
Museum Address:
31001 Magnuson Avenue
Pueblo, CO USA
81001
Museum Focus:: 1950s Military Aviation
Hours of Operation:: From: 10:00 AM To: 4:00 PM
List at least one aircraft on display:: Lockheed P2V-5, Fairchild C-119 Boxcar, Piasecki HC21, etc.
Cost:: Not Listed
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Visit Instructions:
Photo showing GPS w/sign
List one aircraft on display: