Flying Leatherneck: The Only Marine Aviation Museum

For years, Marine Corps Air Station Miramar was home to the only museum in the world dedicated entirely to United States Marine Corps aviation. The Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum holds more than thirty vintage aircraft and eight galleries of artifacts stretching from the earliest days of Marine air power through the present. The collection began at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in the early nineteen nineties, but when that base closed in nineteen ninety-nine, a group of retired Marine generals led the rescue mission, transporting the planes and artifacts to Miramar.

The museum reopened here in May of two thousand. The museum traces the evolution of Marine aviation from canvas biplanes to supersonic jets, honoring the pilots who flew combat missions over every major American conflict of the twentieth century.