July 19-26, 2026 - AirVenture 2026
Liberty Air Museum, Port Clinton Airport
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I've been to the Tin Goose Diner multiple times but never had the time to tour the Liberty Aviation Museum. Today was the day!
The museum starts off with a large room full of artifacts, models, paintings and display cabinets. All good!
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I found this special exhibit on the TV show "Hogan's Heroes" interesting.
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| I really liked this detailed model of the U.S. Coast Guard tall ship: Eagle. Our neighbor across the street was the Captain of the Eagle. He invited us to ride the ship from Annapolis to Baltimore which was fun. |
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Big model of the infamous Titanic. I think they made a movie about it?
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| Huge mode of the U.S.S. Missouri. The Iowa-class battleships were the best ever built. |
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| A diorama of the U.S.S. Pennsylvania as it floated in a Pearl Harbor drydock on December 7, 1941. |
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| I moved to the museum's next part, a big hangar filled with mostly cars, trucks and a Bell AH-1 Cobra, or HueyCobra. |
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This MG-TD caught my eye as my parents used to own one. The color was the same except their's was all maroon and this one has black wheel pants. The car brought back memories. I actually drove it a little when I was in high school. Top speed was 45 mph.
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| To get to the rest of the museum, I had to go outside and cross the ramp. The museum owns this C-47 use it to give rides and raise money. Notice my plane at left. |
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Inside another big hangar. Amidst all the stuff is this M4 Sherman tank, mainstay of the U.S. Army in World War II.
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| From another angle. |
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A PT boat under renovation. The PT boats -- essentially high-speed motor torpedo boats.-- were made of wood, as you can see.
They were fast, lightly built, heavily armed little boats whose crews routinely went out at night looking for Japanese ships, barges and submarines, often operating within sight of enemy shore batteries.
And, despite the Hollywood image, their most important contribution wasn't sinking battleships. It was night fighting, interdiction, reconnaissance and attacking the enormous Japanese barge-supply system in the Pacific.
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| Looks like a lot of work is left to do on the PT boat. |
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A WWII German Jadgpanzer 38 self-propelled gun. This particular vehicle is a 3/4-scale replica.
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| A PBY Catalina brightly painted up to celebrate the 75th-anniversary of U.S. Naval Aviation in 1986. |
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Front-end of a B-25.
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| Back-end. This great airplane served in World War II from beginning to end. |
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| Another American plane that served in World War II from beginning to end: a P-40 Warhawk. |
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| A Ford Tri-Motor under renovation. The docent says the Museum has another one but that it was over at Oshkosh giving rides. |
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There are five or so islands at this end of Lake Eirie, just north of Port Clinton. Island Airlines, flying Ford Tri-Motors, used to provide service to the islands.
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This room on the side of the hangar had a bunch of fascinating dioramas.
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| One of the huge railway guns used by Germany during World War II at places like Sevastopol. |
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| A Roman Quinquereme, their main heavy fighting ship in the 3rd Century BC. |
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| A diorama depicting the capture of the German U-boat U-505. |
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| I rounded the corner and there was this German tank. At first I thought it was a Panzer IV, but the docent told me it was a Tiger, in 1/2-scale. Some individual had built it hoping to make some money selling it. But there were no buyers so he ended up donating it to this museum. |
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I enjoyed touring the Liberty Aviation Museum. Stop in if you're in the area.
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