Armstrong Air & Space Museum Opens in Wapakoneta

Three years to the day after Neil Armstrong took those historic first steps on the moon, his hometown of Wapakoneta marked the occasion with the opening of a museum in his honor.

On July 20, 1972, the northwest Ohio community celebrated the unveiling of the Armstrong Air & Space Museum. Commissioned in 1969 by then-Gov. James A. Rhodes, the $1 million project was intended to commemorate Armstrong’s achievement and showcase a collection of artifacts marking feats by fellow Ohioans like John Glenn and the Wright brothers.

News outlets across the state reported on the Armstrong Air & Space Museum’s opening, including The Lima News. In the paper’s July 20, 1972, edition, news area editor Fred Parker describes the unique design of the 6,000-square-foot facility.

“Instead of the massive, block-like structure often associated with storehouses for artifacts, the Armstrong Museum pokes its dome and grasshopper-like legs out from a huge mound of earth,” he wrote.

Sitting just outside the museum at the end of the driveway, the F5D Skylancer, which Armstrong flew while working for NASA, welcomed visitors and provided a sneak peek of the treasures that awaited inside. 

An Associated Press report from Wapakoneta published in several area papers, including The Chillicothe Gazette and The Urbana Daily Citizen, noted some of what visitors would find at the new museum. 

“Among things on display are a model of the first plane Armstrong ever flew, a section of a Jupiter rocket, a Model G plane created by the Wright brothers, the original Gemini VIII space capsule piloted by Armstrong and David R. Scott in 1966, and Armstrong’s backup moon-flight space suit,” the Associated Press report noted. 

Some of those in attendance at the museum’s grand opening were Gov. John Gilligan, Tricia Nixon Cox, daughter of then-president Richard Nixon, and the hometown hero himself, Armstrong.

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