Mid-America Air Museum

03/17/2026

With over 100 aircrafts on display, whether your interest is general aviation, warbirds, helicopters or experimentals and homebuilts, there's something to spark your imagination at Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal. Also featured is a hands-on Hall of A...

03/13/2026

The Republic F-105 Thunderchief, also known as the “Thud”, was the biggest single-seat and single-engine combat aircraft in the world. This nuclear-capable fighter-bomber was primarily used by the U.S. Air Force in the Vietnam War. The Thunderchief was built from 1955 to 1964, but the F-105 G model was used until its retirement in 1984. 833 F-105’s were made, and 382 aircraft were lost. At high altitudes, this plane could fly at Mach 2 or twice the speed of sound, but spent most of its time doing low-level bombing runs over enemy positions.

The F-105 here at the museum is the G variant, meaning it was a two-seater and was used as a Wild Weasel. The goal of the Wild Weasel was to act as a decoy and trick enemies to follow them as they flew overhead; meanwhile, the crew of the Thud would trace the radar back to its point of origin and destroy the surface-to-air missile site or SAM sites. This mission was very dangerous as the pilots had to either dive or break sharply to avoid being shot down. This tactic, along with the restrictive rules of engagement at the time (retaliate only when attacked), was among the reasons the Thud had one of the highest loss rates in the war. Wild Weasel pilots were the first into combat and the last to leave.

Our F-105 was flown by Liberal native Air Force Lieutenant Colonel John Baker as a Wild Weasel.

03/06/2026

Glenn L. Martin was born in Macksburg, Iowa, on January 17, 1886. His family moved to Liberal, KS, for a brief time to open a hardware store in partnership with the Keating family (the same family as Keating Tractor of Liberal). Later, the family moved to Salina, KS, and on to Santa Ana, CA. Martin got his start with aviation in the making of kites. As a young boy, in the windy skies of Kansas, he flew kites with his friends. Unfortunately, they weren’t up to par with his standards, so to work he went. With the help of his mother, Martin made a box kite. It was a mockery among his friends at first, but once it took flight, they were eagerly paying 25 cents for their own.
In 1909, Martin had his first flight in an aircraft he built in an abandoned church. By 1911, his name was said in line with American aviation pioneers like the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtis. Martin went on to create two aircraft companies, both named after him and both of which merged with other companies. One of the most notable merged companies is the modern Lockheed Martin, known for its aircraft built for the United States military. Many future aviation entrepreneurs made their start at Martin’s factory in Baltimore, Maryland.
He passed away in 1955. Many things have been named in honor of his legacy, including Liberal’s own Airport Terminal.

02/27/2026

The extra gas tanks added to Max Conrad’s Piper Comanche are the subject this week.

In the March 1965 issue of The AOPA Pilot, it was written that "the Twin Comanche already had a normal 90-gallon fuel supply good for over 1,000 miles. To this, Max added an additional 632-gallon capacity by placing extra tanks in the wings, wing tips, nose, baggage compartment, fuselage, cabin, and finally…a seat-shaped tank covered with a thin rubber padding on which Conrad sat throughout the entire 56-hour flight."

If you would like to know more about Max Conrad and his story, we sell the book "Into the Wind, The Story of Max Conrad" by Sally Buegeleisen, in the museum gift shop.

02/25/2026

This does include the Museum as a department of the City of Liberal.

Beginning March 16, 2026, the City of Liberal will no longer be able to accept pennies for cash transactions. This is due to bank policy changes as a result of discontinued penny production.
All cash transactions will be rounded up to the nearest nickel. To avoid this rounding, please pay with check or card payment. Utility bills will be credited for payment over the original bill amount.

A partir del 16 de marzo de 2026, la Ciudad de Liberal ya no podrá aceptar centavos para transacciones en efectivo. Esto se debe a cambios en la política bancaria como resultado de la interrupción de la producción de centavos.
Todas las transacciones en efectivo se redondearán al 5 centavos más cercano. Para evitar este redondeo, pague con cheque o tarjeta. Se abonará el importe de las facturas de servicios públicos por encima del monto original.

02/24/2026

02/20/2026

The Piper Comanche is a very popular and reliable, low-wing, all-metal aircraft. It was produced between 1958 and 1972. Our Piper is a Comanche PA-24-250, meaning it has a Lycoming O-540 engine that produces 250 horsepower. That engine will propel the plane at a cruising speed of 160 knots or 185 miles per hour. However, our Comanche is highly modified to set endurance records. The inside of the Comanche could typically seat four people, but ours has had all its seats stripped away and replaced with fuel tanks, including the pilot seat, which is a 40-gallon fuel tank shaped like a seat. This Comanche was the chosen plane of legendary aviator Max Conrad, who broke three endurance world records in this plane. The most notable of these records was his flight from Casablanca, Morocco, to Los Angeles, California, in one shot, where he was in the air, alone, for over 58 hours. Conrad also flew our Comanche from Casablanca to El Paso, a flight that held the record for the longest flight in a straight line that lasted for 56 hours. Before that flight, he changed the engine to a smaller engine (180 horsepower) that used less fuel, which allowed him to set the record in a completely different class. The third and final record our Comanche completed with Conrad was a distance over a closed circuit. He flew from Minneapolis to Chicago to Des Moines and back to Minneapolis seven times for a distance of 6,912 miles.

Our plane is on loan from the Comanche Flyer Foundation Inc.

02/17/2026

The Museum is closed today for Presidents' Day observance.

02/16/2026

Musuem closed February 17 for Presidents' Day observance

02/14/2026

Calling all aviation industry stakeholders, educators within a drive of Liberal, KS, or anyone interested in learning about aviation.

Join us at Liberal on April 1st for an amazing aviation outreach event in partnership with Mid-America Air Museum and the City of Liberal, Kansas.

This is a free, open to the public event. Any schools or homeschool students who wish to attend may call the museum at
(620) 624-5263 for questions or coordination.

02/13/2026

Max Conrad was born on January 21, 1903, in Winona, Minnesota. He is best known for making nine official world record flights in a small light aircraft. The most famous of these flights was his multi-day, non-stop trip from Casablanca, Morocco, to Los Angeles, California, a distance of 7,669 miles. He took on this endeavor in a small, specially modified Piper Comanche 250. The inside of this plane was filled with fuel tanks; even the seat he sat on for over 58 hours was a fuel tank. During this time, he ate no food and only had sips of tea every hour. He even left the maps behind and committed the entire journey to memory. During the day, he would fly at an altitude of 300 feet and at night move up to 500 feet to make the fuel last longer and make the plane more efficient. He also flew all the way around the world in a Piper Aztec on a 14-leg, 8.5-day journey that took him around the equator. Conrad was known as “The Foremost Pilot of Lightplanes in the World”. Upon his death on April 3, 1979, at the age of 76, he had crossed the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans almost 200 times, set numerous distance, speed, and endurance records, and became the first general aviation pilot to win the Harmon International Aviation Trophy in 1965.

02/06/2026

Before the 1940s, flight helmets were made of soft fabric or leather, as commonly worn by Amelia Earhart. However, with the introduction of turbine jet engines at the end of World War II, a new, harder type of helmet was needed for the protection of the pilots. During the late 1940s into the late 1950s, there were a number of prototypes and testing, ranging from materials like pressure-molded cotton fabric, resin plastics, and fiberglass. The AHP-5 (the designation under the Navy) set the standard for aviation military helmets, enough so that the US Air Force made their own version, designated HGU-2/P. Our AHP-5 flight helmet was actually a US Army helmet. It was owned and used by Daniel Esco Taylor during his two tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a helicopter pilot.

This artifact is currently on display in the museum.