Patuxent River Naval Air Museum

Patuxent River Naval Air Museum. Naval Air Station, Patuxent River, Maryland. , This Museum is the vision of a group of Navy and civilian personnel who in 1974 set out to formally organize a museum to preserve and celebrate the history of the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River. , They received support from the community, the county, and the State; and in 1978 the Naval Air Test and Evaluation Museum opened in a building on grounds provided by the Naval Air Station. The building was originally built as the USO Canteen toward the end of World War II. , In 1992, the Secretary of the Navy designated the Museum as one of the ten official Navy museums. , In 1997, the Museum’s name was changed to the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum to reflect its new mission of preserving and interpreting the research, development, testing and evaluation of naval aircraft and their related systems. , The Museum is the repository for all of the artifacts, photographs and films, documents and other heritage memorabilia from Patuxent River, and other stations, such as Warminster, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey, now all consolidated at Patuxent River under the Naval Air Systems Command and the Naval Air Warfare Command Aircraft Division. , The aircraft on the Museum grounds are representative of the aircraft developed for the Navy and actually tested at Patuxent River. , The Museum is dedicated to all of those who have expended their talents in a myriad of different ways to the cause of advancing naval aviation technology.