Mid-America Air Museum

Liberal's connection to aviation began in 1943, when the Army built an airfield here to train crews for the B-24 Liberator, the four-engine heavy bomber. By the time the base closed in 1945, the museum says, nearly one-third of all B-24 command pilots had trained in Liberal. In 1951 Beechcraft came to the old field, and by the 1970s it ran a major assembly plant here producing light planes, among them the Musketeer, Sundowner, Sport 150, Skipper and Duchess.

The museum was an idea from the 40th reunion of Liberal Army Airfield veterans in 1986, and it opened in 1987 inside the former Beechcraft plant. Much of the collection came from Colonel Tom Thomas Jr., a retired Air Force officer who loaned dozens of aircraft and looked for a permanent home for them before he died in 1998. In 1997 the City of Liberal took over the museum and accepted his donation of 53 planes, valued at nearly $3 million.

There are now more than 100 aircraft across more than 80,000 square feet indoors and more outside. The military collection runs from a Chance Vought F4U-5N Corsair on loan from the Marine Corps to an F-14A Tomcat on loan from the Navy, with an F-105G Thunderchief, an F-104C Starfighter, an OV-10 Bronco and Army helicopters from the Huey to the Cobra. Other rooms cover the airfield's own history, Kansas aviators from Amelia Earhart on, a Norden bombsight on loan from the Cosmosphere, the International Flying Farmers and homebuilt experimental planes. Visitors can sit in some of the aircraft.