Evergreen Air & Space Museum

My parents and I went to visit my sister and her family in Portland this past weekend. On Saturday, we went to check out a local air & space museum. Since it was out in the middle of nowhere, I didn't expect too much. It's a private museum owned by Evergreen International Aviation (we thought it was part of the Taiwanese company at first) and it was located across from the McMinnville airport. I'm happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the collection of airplanes and spacecrafts they had on display. The centerpiece is the Spruce Goose, built by Howard Hughes. I never went to visit it while it was in Long Beach. I knew they moved it from LB to another museum up the coast a few years ago but I never knew where exactly. The museum is also supposed to get a space shuttle soon; not sure if it's going to be an "actual" shuttle or a replica since they didn't build that many. They must have a lot of influence in government.


Boeing 747-100 on top of a new building (it's supposed to be a water ride or something). The plane was on the ground the last time my sister visited the museum. We couldn't figure out how they managed to get it on top of the building.


Hughes H-4 Hercules (Spruce Goose)... it's really large!


Inside the Spruce Goose looking back towards the tail section.


F-4C Phantom II


Me-262 - One of the first operational jet fighters in WWII.


F4U Corsair - These planes were used in the TV show Baa Baa Black Sheep during the late 70's. I watched a lot of episodes of this show.


P-38J Lightning - It looks like this one shot down a lot of Japanese planes.


P-40 Warhawk used by the Flying Tigers during WWII in China. It has the Nationalist/KMT markings under the wings.


V-2 rocket


First stage rocket motors from a Titan IV rocket


SR-71A Blackbird - I've read so much about this plane but have never seen one in person. It's much bigger than I imagined.


The business end of a Pratt & Whitney J58 jet engine; two of these powered the SR-71 to a top speed of Mach 3.2 (~2,200 mph).


Another view of the SR-71 from the front. They let you get pretty close to the planes on display.


F-5E Tiger II parked outside. Northrop sold a lot of these to Taiwan (and everyone else).


MiG-29 Fulcrum A - How did they get one of these?

There was also an IMAX theater but since we got there at ~3:30pm and they closed at 5pm, we didn't get to see everything.