While in LA for the Naval Gazing meetup, the group went to the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance. It's a small, obscure museum that I hadn't even known about until a friend recommended it during the last LA meetup, but it seemed like a good thing to do on Friday as an appetizer before the battleship on Saturday.

The museum's party piece
The museum is at the Torrance Airport, which is somewhat irritating to get to, given its distance from the freeways. And while it makes some attempt to chronicle the rich history of airplane production in greater LA, it started as Northrop's house museum, and that very much shows in the planes they have and what part of the story they are most interested in telling. The site is absurdly small, with only five jets on display and not really room for any more: a rather pretty F-86, a two-seat Harrier trainer (which may not be there long, but I'm sure they can find something to replace it), an early A4D-1 Skyhawk, and two Northrop products, an ex-Norwegian F-5 and one of two YF-23 prototypes, the other one of which is at Dayton. (Various places talk about an F-14 and a YF-17, but these appear to be parked elsewhere on the airport.) They did have a fairly large collection of models, engines, and so on to pad the museum out, including an R-4360 that was on Spruce Goose at one point. Read more...
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