Husband and I made a trip to Cleveland back in November. On the way home we passed a sign in the Akron area that noted “MAPS Air Museum” and we never pass up aviation history! So, of course we stopped.
Below are a few photos (and the link to my Flickr album with a couple hundred more, including the indoor displays which were AMAZING).
I highly recommend a visit! It was completely worth the stop!!
Per the official website: https://mapsairmuseum.org/
MAPS Air Museum is a “working” Museum. What does that mean? Many of the aircraft that MAPS receives are dilapidated and need a lot of restoration work. Due to that, this means many volunteer hours are not just going toward general maintenance/upkeep on aircraft, but also on continuous work to refurbish these aircraft.
The aircraft under refurbishment at MAPS are at varying stages of repair or maintenance. Anywhere from a completed aircraft that needs basic general maintenance, all the way down to extremely deteriorated aircraft that are dismantled to its base fuselage for work to be done. When one is complete, MAPS finds more aircraft to refurbish before they deteriorate too much. Many are rare to find and/or heavily deteriorated.
As an example, our B-26 Marauder of the WWII era required more than 13,500 volunteer man hours to repair. This aircraft crash landed in early 1942, in British Columbia, Canada and stayed there for a long time before anyone attempted to revive this rare aircraft. This aircraft at MAPS is only 1 of 4 fully refurbished aircraft on display in the world (only 1 of which is flyable) and another 3 at various degrees of repair.
Below you will find a listing of the types of aircraft, mostly military, that are in various stages of refurbishment or maintenance. A few aircraft are in our restricted Restoration building for heavy repairs. While many others are awaiting their turn to be fully restored, you can still see many of these aircraft on display at MAPS.
MAPS Air Museum attains their aircraft through purchases, but also through indefinite loan agreements from many entities, such as: private collections, the M.A.R.C group, McKinley Museum and the United States Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force. Below, you will see the listing of aircraft at the MAPS Air Museum.
There has been a banquet the night before so all of the aircraft had been taken out of the hangar. We braved the cold air to go have a look. I cannot tell you how happy it would make me.
My Dad, James Paul Seletyn, was an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force. The craft he maintained was the F-101 Voodoo. Well, guess what aircraft they had? You guessed it! There was the Voodoo in all of its glory! I could press my hand against it and everything. Dad’s plane! What a treat!
Per their website on the F101:
OUR AIRCRAFT’S HISTORY
McDonnell F-101F-91-MC “Voodoo” (S/N 57-0342; MSN #520) ~ This sleek Voodoo was manufactured by McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, Missouri in August of 1959 as a F-101B-90-MC and delivered to the US Air Force on August 20th, 1959. First being with the 52nd Consolidated Maintenance Squadron, Air Defense Command, Suffolk Air Force Base, New York.
- January 1960 – 444th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, ADC, Charleston AFB, South Carolina; deployed to Hamilton AFB, California
- February 1961 – Converted to F-101F
- October 1962 – 4756th Air Defense Group, ADC, Tyndall AFB, Florida
- January 1968 – Air Defense Weapons Center, ADC, Tyndall AFB, Florida
- May 1971 – 147th Fighter-Interceptor Group, Texas Air National Guard (ANG), NAS, Ellington, Texas
- April 1978 – 111th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron, Texas ANG, Ellington NAS, Texas
- July 1982 – Military Aircraft Storage and Disposition Center, Davis-Monthan, AFB, Arizona
- May 1985 – Dropped from Inventory by transfer to museum status
- June 1998 – Transferred to the Florida Military Aviation Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida by the US Air Force Museum
This museum became defunct and with military approval, was recovered and transferred to the MAPS Air Museum in November 2004, where it is maintained by Crew Chief Kent Kleinknecht.
SPECIFICATIONS/PERFORMANCE (F-101B)
- Role: Fighter/Interceptor
- Manufacturer: McDonnell Aircraft
- First flight: September 29, 1954
- Introduction: May 1957
- Retired from the US Military: 1982 (US ANG)
- Number built: 807
- Unit cost: US $1,754,066
- Crew: 2
- Length: 67 ft 5 in
- Wingspan: 39 ft 8 in
- Height: 18 ft
- Empty Weight: 28,495 lbs
- Max takeoff weight: 52,400 lbs
- Engines: 2 x Pratt & Whitney J57-P-55 afterburning turbojets, 11,990 lbf thrust each dry, 16,900 lbf with afterburner
- Max speed 1,134 mph (Mach 1.72)
- Range: 1,520 mi
- Service ceiling: 58,400 ft
ARMAMENT, NOTABLE
- 4 (originally 6) x AIM-4 Falcon rockets, or
- 2 x AIR-2 Genie nuclear rockets, plus 2 x AIM-4 Falcon rockets
Museum display note: Our F-101F was recently (November 2019) freshly re-painted and marked as a F-101B (S/N 57-0276) to pay homage to the 87th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron (ADC) stationed at Lockborne AFB from 1960-68, which is now Rickenbacher Air National Guard Base, Ohio.
Designed to replace: North American P-51 “Mustang”
Designed from: XF-88 “VooDoo” program
Intended successor aircraft: F-4 “Phantom II”
To see all of our photos (many of the ones noted in the inventory below), please check out my Flickr album: HERE
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rellehcim/albums/72157713086970383/with/49527570856/
Per their website, the current aircraft inventory:
| aft | Name | Status of Aircraft | Serial or Bureau # |
|---|---|---|---|
| A-7E | Corsair II | On Display | 159268 |
| A-4 | Skyhawk | On Display | 139947 |
| A-26C | Invader | On Display | 43-22602 |
| A-67 | Dragon | n/a, in storage | SR-P001 (N906US) |
| AH-1S | Cobra | On Display | 70-16084 |
| B-26 | Marauder | On Display | 40-1459 |
| BT-13A | Valiant | Restricted, in Restoration Building | 41-21271 |
| C-3 | n/a | On Display | n/a |
| C-47 | Skytrain (Gooney Bird) | On Display | 45-928 |
| EA-6B | Prowler | On Display | 163047 |
| FG-1D | Corsair | Restricted, in Restoration building | 76671 |
| F9F-8P | Cougar | On Display | 144402 |
| F-4S | Phantom | On Display | 155764 |
| F-11F | Tiger | On Display | 57-0342 |
| F-14B | Tomcat | On Display | 162694 |
| F-16A | Fighting Falcon | On Display | 80-0513 |
| F-84F | Thunderstreak | On Display | 52-6524 |
| F-86A | Sabre | Restricted, in Restoration Building | 48-0263 |
| F-86D/L | SabreDog D/L | On Display | 53-0658 |
| F-100D | Super Sabre (Hun) | On Display, being renovated | 56-3081 |
| F-101F | Voodoo | On Display | 57-0342 |
| F-102A | Delta Dagger | On Display, being renovated | 56-0986 |
| F-105B | Tunderchief (Thud) | On Display, being renovated | 57-5820 |
| GA-22A | Drake | On Display | 4040 |
| GZ-22 | Spirit of Akron | On Display | 4120 |
| H-19D | Chickasaw | Restricted, in Restoration Building | 54-1412 |
| Hawk | Arrow II | On Display | |
| L-17B | Navion | On Display | NAV4227 |
| L-29 | Delfn | On Display, awaiting renovations | 892-828 |
| Martin | Glider | On Display | one of a kind |
| MiG-15bis | Fagot | On Display, awaiting renovations | 526-116 |
| Lim-6bis | Fresco | On Display | 1J-04-19 |
| MiG-21F-13 | Fishbed | On Display, being renovated | 506301 |
| B-75-L | Funk Model B | Being renovated | 205 |
| OH-58A | Kiowa | On Display | 69-16153 |
| OV-1A | Mohawk | Restricted, in Restoration building | 63-13128 |
| P-51 | Mustang Mockup | On MAPS Entrance pole | n/a |
| Pitts S-1 | Pitts Special | On Display | 149-H |
| PT-19 | Cornell | On Display | 43-31365 |
| RB-1 | Snowbird | n/a, in storage | |
| S2F-1 | Tracker | On Display | 136464 |
| SNB-5 | Expeditor | On Display | 43-33316 |
| Sopwith Tri-Plane | Sopwith Tri-plane | On Display | 001 |
| T-28A | Trojan | On Display | 51-3565 |
| T-33A | Shooting Star | On Display | 53-5250 |
| T-37B (White) | Tweet | On Display, awaiting renovations | 54-2732 |
| T-37B (Blue) | Tweet | On Display | 60-0188 |
| U-11A (PA-23-150) | Aztec (Apache) | On Display, awaiting renovations | 23-894 |
Thoughts and Ponderances 
