Qualla: Florence Air & Missile Museum

Florence Air & Missile Museum: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Thomas C. Griffin chose Christmas Day 1963 to open his museum. The airport behind him had been Florence Army Airfield during the war, where young men trained in P-39 Airacobras and P-40 Warhawks before being sent overseas, and the runways were still long enough for the Air Force to fly retiring aircraft down and leave them. By the end of the 1980s, Griffin had assembled an open-air collection that included a B-29 Superfortress, an F-104 Starfighter, a NTB-47 Stratojet, a Constellation that had flown the Navy's final propeller-driven patrol mission, and a full-size Titan I ballistic missile. The whole place sat right next to U.S. Highway 301 - the old north-south road that funneled traffic between New York and Florida before the interstate.

Florence Air & Missile Museum: A Field That Trained Pilots

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Florence Army Airfield - more commonly Florence Field - was a U.S. Army Air Forces training base during World War II. Cadets learned to fly fighters here: P-39 Airacobras and P-40 Warhawks. Attack pilots trained in A-20 Havocs and A-26 Invaders. After the war the field was return...

Florence Air & Missile Museum: The Collection

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At its peak the museum's outdoor display included the B-29 Sweet Eloise (originally Miss Marilyn Gay), the YF-102A Delta Dagger prototype, an F-101F Voodoo, an F-104B Starfighter, an F-86H Sabre, an F-89J Scorpion, a NTB-47B Stratojet, a Boeing KC-97G Stratofreighter, a Martin RB...

Florence Air & Missile Museum: The Highway That Killed It

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Interstate 95 changed the math. The interstate opened in pieces through the 1960s, and once it was complete, traffic that had been creeping past the museum on U.S. 301 began flying past at seventy miles an hour, miles away. Visitor numbers declined through the 1970s and 1980s. Th...

Florence Air & Missile Museum: Where the Planes Went

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Much of the surviving collection ended up at the newly established Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte: the Regulus I cruise missile, the YF-102A Delta Dagger, the CH-34A Choctaw, the F-101F Voodoo, parts of a KC-97G used to complete another, the Honest John tactical rocket. T...

Florence Air & Missile Museum: What Was Lost

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Not everything found a home. The KC-97G stratofreighter was scrapped for parts. The Douglas WB-66D Destroyer was scrapped outright. The Titan I ballistic missile - a full-size example of an early Cold War American intercontinental nuclear missile - was also scrapped, a loss that ...