Warbird Information Exchange

Facing the loss of collection aircraft in the wake of recent reviews and an experts’ analysis that calls for it to do more to establish its identity, the 8th Air Force Museum at Barksdale Air Force Base is mulling its future and gearing up to make some changes.

A major change that will greet everyone entering its facility just inside the North Gate of the world’s premier bomber base will be a name change to be effective Oct. 2. It should be unveiled in a public ceremony at 11 a.m. that day.

“We are the Barksdale Global Power Museum now,” new museum Director Amy Russell told the board of the 8th Air Force Museum Association at its most recent meeting. “We are still waiting on an official logo of what we are going to use. ... We are changing.”

Under the name it has had since the late 1970s, the museum has invited confusion with the younger but better-financed, better-supported and privately operated Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum in Savannah, Ga., and distanced itself from the 2nd Bomb Wing, through which it is funded and operated, and Barksdale Air Force Base, named after a pioneering test pilot from a militarily and socially historic Mississippi family. At the same time, the local museum is not funded by, or organizationally under, 8th Air Force.

Until recently, the museum and its related fundraising association, which also plans to change its name, had as their goal an eventual move to a new site on the north side of the base East Reservation, south of Interstate 20 at I-220 near the Cyber Innovation Center. Such a site would make the facility more accessible to the public and less of a security concern to the base, which is home to not only 2nd Bomb Wing, but also to the 8th Air Force and Air Force Global Strike Command.

But a drive to build a multimillion-dollar museum with that could divert attention, resources and contributions from potential supporters and volunteers and would be contingent on creation of a new gate and access road onto the base, which might or might not happen, so that has been pushed off.

“It’s not even on a burner,” Russell said.

Key goals over the next year are to increase the level of volunteer involvement and to raise money to purchase and erect canopies over its most vulnerable collection aircraft, its B-47, B-17 and SR-71.

“I need volunteers,” Russell said. “I need worker bees, I need people who can paint a room. I need people who are willing to work outside, who are
willing to wash airplanes.”

The museum will have a busy period leading into the new year. After the renaming event, the museum will be host to the Oct. 15 rededication of a memorial to 19 Barksdale-based 1st Combat Evaluation Group, or Combat Skyspot, personnel killed during the Vietnam War, followed by the museum’s largest fundraiser, its annual golf tournament, Nov. 2 at Olde Oaks Golf Club, and its annual banquet Nov. 9 at El Dorado Casino with guest speaker Dr. Robert Barish of LSU Health Shreveport.

Also ahead this year will be a one-of-a-kind memorial dedication, honoring airplanes and crews lost in the historic Linebacker II, a decisive but costly air campaign that arguably brought the main U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War to a close, with a return of the enemy to the negotiating table and the freeing of U.S. prisoners of war. Linebacker II lasted 11 nights, involved 729 B-52 sorties unleashing 15,000 tons of bombs on the enemy.

The dedication, which may involve veterans of the air campaign, including possibly some former Vietnam War POWs, will be at 10 a.m. Dec. 8 in the museum air park by its display B-52 bombers.

The museum also has received a final feasibility study outlining strategies it can use to survive in today’s competitive tourist market.

The study, performed as a donation to the 8th Air Force Museum Asociation by the John F. Welch College of Business at Sacred Heart University in Luxembourg, was conducted by retired Chief Master Sgt. Don Molner, last stationed at Barksdale and a past volunteer at the museum, and his associates Antoine Peter and Ingo Willems.

That study determined the museum, even at a new location, could sustain itself, provided a robust marketing staff and operations strategy can be enacted.

“Our research has shown that an operations plan can be developed for this new proposed (museum) which would generate sufficient revenues,” the study said. “However, in order to accomplish this, a robust marketing staff and operations strategy would have to be implemented. In addition, a staff of business-oriented managers would be needed to develop, implement and oversee these features which leverage the museum’s assets.”

It also said a thrust would have to be made in the area of education, “a key element for the museum and in keeping with the dynamics of success for future museums.”

I'll bet there are some folks at the NASM who are watching this situation (and a certain B-24) very closely...

I hope some folks at YAM in Michigan are watching even more closely.

I don't know, but I think in the battle of bucks/standing between YAM and NASM, NASM wins. It's a USAF airplane, correct?

I am heading to the Museum on Friday. I'm excited to see this collection for the first time and if anyone has any requests for pictures of specific aircraft or parts let me know and I will do my best to take it and post it here.

If not YAM how about the Henry Ford museum's. It would be a lovely addition to thier collection of airplanes. Maybe the Ford's can lobby to have one of Grandpa Henry's airplanes back.