The March Field Air Museum is an aviation museum near Moreno Valley and Riverside, California, located in March Air Reserve Base.

History

The museum was founded in 1979 as March Air Force Base Museum. One of the first exhibits at the museum was a collection of art painted by Hazel Olson. It moved to a new location at the base's former commissary, where it reopened to the public in 1981. That same year, a B-29 was flown to the museum. The museum moved again in 1993 to its current location west of the runway along Interstate 215. Originally operated by the Air Force, the museum's operation was transferred to a nonprofit organization in 1996.

Exhibits

Outside, the museum has constructed Firebase Romeo Charlie, a reproduction of a Vietnam-era forward operating location.

Aircraft on display

The museum has over 100 aircraft on display.

Indoor exhibits

Indoor displays include:

• A replica Wright Flyer
• A section of a Boeing B-47 cockpit which was used in the filming of the 1955 film Strategic Air Command starring Jimmy Stewart.
• A movie played on a regular recurring schedule
• A German 30mm cannon and jet engines
• Missile and bomb cross-sections
• A recreation of a World War II-era mural

Memorials

• A memorial to War dogs.
• The Distinguished Flying Cross National Memorial Act, signed July 25, 2014, designated the memorial at the museum in honor of current and former members of the Armed Forces who have been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross as the Distinguished Flying Cross National Memorial. The national memorial was dedicated on October 27, 2010.
• A memorial to NASA astronauts killed in the Challenger and Columbia disasters that uses a Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster.

In the media

Television

The March Field Air Museum was featured on an episode of Ghost Adventures in 2018. The team of paranormal investigators investigated paranormal claims of artifacts being thrown out of their glass cases by an unseen force while in the Main Hangar, voices of children who died with their mother from the flu when they lived on the property before the Restoration Hangar was built, and sounds of soldiers preparing for battle while in the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter display aircraft.