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Museum Spotlight: Moffett Field, California

Moffett Federal Airfield (KNUQ) in Mountain View, California, is the home of Hangar One, one of the largest free-standing buildings in the world.

Friday, December 30, 2022 at 09:59 AM ET

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Edited By: tccjeremy

The Moffett Field Historical Society Museum's Lockheed U2C on display. [Credit: Moffett Field Historical Society Museum]

Key Takeaways:

The Moffett Field Historical Society Museum is housed at Moffett Federal Airfield, a site with a rich history including Hangar One, built for the USS Macon dirigible, and named after Rear Admiral William A. Moffett.
Executive Director Jeff Wasel's favorite aircraft is the F-8U-1 Crusader cockpit section, which he describes as an ultimate pre-missile era U.S. Navy fighter and "the last Gunfighter."
Museum visitors' top choice is the Lockheed U-2C spy plane, famous for its reconnaissance missions, its unique conversion for carrier deployment (U-2G variant), and its later use in NASA's Earth observation programs.

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We all have our favorite aircraft—even the people who are charged with caring for them at the aviation museums across the country. Since December is the birthday month of powered flight, FLYING magazine reached out to museums across the country to find out which aircraft are the personal favorites of the museum staff as well as the museum visitors.

Moffett Field Museum, Mountain View, California

Some airports are easy to miss when you drive by them—all you see is a flat area, some industrial buildings and a few aircraft. Moffett Federal Airfield (KNUQ) in Mountain View, California, is not one of them. It’s the home of Hangar One, one of the largest free-standing buildings in the world. The dome-topped hangar dominates the landscape of the Silicon Valley.

Meg Godlewski has been an aviation journalist for more than 24 years and a CFI for more than 20 years. If she is not flying or teaching aviation, she is writing about it. Meg is a founding member of the Pilot Proficiency Center at EAA AirVenture and excels at the application of simulation technology to flatten the learning curve. Follow Meg on Twitter @2Lewski.