Welcome to the official website of the Pioneer Valley Military & Transportation Museum! We are located at Westfield - Barnes Airport in Westfield, MA. We are a non-profit 501(c)3 educational museum-to-be preserving and presenting all forms of military transportation.

Our vision is to have an “Active” museum! Trucks that can be driven, aircraft that fly and other vehicles milling about! We plan to have much more than static displays like many museums. Our goal is to educate the public in an exciting manner with a hands-on experience for all ages. See a WWII airplane take off and fly, view a working air tower replica from the war and read about history first hand from a letter written almost 100 years ago.

Our site will allow visitors to view aircraft activity at the airport including F15 activity as the 104th Fighter Wing prepares for full operational status as well as to periodically observe vintage war birds and other vintage military and civilian vehicles visiting the museum.

We welcome all new members! A large membership makes up a great institution. Come be part of history in the present and in the future.

• Our May 2nd trip to the Intrepid Museum has been changed to May 9th! Click on Special events for more information!
  
• We have started to work at the property on Saturdays from 9am to 12pm. Stop in and see us! (weather permitting)
  
• There will be a lot happening at the airport in the Spring 2009! We have a several destruction and construction projects planned! For more information call Leo 529-9296.

A message from our president!

Hello Members,

We had a financially successful 2008! Unfortunately, due to certain setbacks, we did not accomplish as much on our site as we had hoped, but we plan to make it up in 2009. There were several notable accomplishments last year. As I mentioned in our last newsletter, we sold the Antonov AN-2. In late September, several of our members helped prepare it for a ferry flight to South Carolina. It was very interesting work and it was a wonderful sight to see it fly away! The ferry pilot, Stan Boyer, did a fantastic job and flew an incident free flight to its new home. We hope the new owners get good use of the airplane. Also, we have recently sold several aircraft parts that were given to us. Even though we are not a parts dealer, we have profited very well from these sales which make the efforts of a few, well worth the sweat. I am very pleased to report our bank account has grown substantially. It is my goal to do whatever it takes to accumulate as much seed money as we can in order to begin our capital campaign and we are moving forward nicely.

Our Annual Benefit Dance, which was held last September at the East Mountain Country Club, was well attended. We danced to great music performed by Cory and The Knightsmen. The food was delicious as it always is at EMCC. Many raffle prizes, donated by several local businesses, were given away to our guests. Mark Perez of EMCC put together an awesome display of aircraft parts that have been found on the golf course property over the years. The parts are from the crash of two F86E’s in 1952 that were performing at Westfield Barnes Airport for a dedication and air show.

We will be holding our 2009 Annual Meeting on March 28th at the Westwood Pub in Westfield. Dinner will be primarily for board members with limited availability if other PVMTM members are interested in joining us. Please call Dorothy at 455-8678 for information. The main purpose of this meeting is to re-assign our board with a quick vote and to discuss some of our 2009 plans. We opted for a small meeting this time to save money and to focus our efforts on other larger events later in the year.

We are looking forward to the warmer spring weather! We plan to continue working on clearing the property, preparing for future construction. If you are interested in volunteering, we are always looking for help Saturday mornings between 9:00 and noon. Also, keep an eye out for our 2009 events. So far, we have tentative dates for several outings. Please keep August 29th open for our Annual Hangar Dance at the airport! We are preparing for another good time.

Leo Dube
President PVMTM

Newsletters!

For the 3-4th quarter 2008 Newsletter Click Here!
For the 2nd quarter 2008 Newsletter Click Here!
For the 1st quarter 2008 Newsletter Click Here!
For the 4th quarter 2007-2008 Newsletter Click Here!
For the 3rd quarter 2007 Newsletter Click Here!
For the 2nd quarter 2007 Newsletter Click Here!
For the 1st quarter 2007 Newsletter Click Here!

We use Adobe PDF files throughout our website.