It\u2019s Memorial Day <\/span>weekend, and I\u2019m hung over in the hull gunner of an M36 Jackson tank. This green, mean fighting machine once killed its fair share of Nazis. Decades later, its engine still roars with a fresh ferocity, though its cannon is a couple of firing pins short of battle-ready. That\u2019s fine by me. I\u2019m no soldier but a civilian, a queasy millennial tourist cosplaying as a member of the Greatest Generation.<\/p>\n For a $195 \u201cdonation,\u201d I\u2019ve secured a 10-minute ride in this 29-ton piece of history. My driver is a retired Army tank engineer named Mike. He gamely answers questions about the Jackson\u2019s history before playfully navigating me and a few other patrons around a large dirt track, spitting up soil and making the earth shake. I think briefly of the terrified young GIs who navigated foggy European fields in this creaky armored beast. Then I take out my phone, stick out my tongue, and take a selfie.<\/p>\n Such is the appeal of the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, Massachusetts, where war is at once hallowed and frivolous, immediate and totally removed. Its 113 acres provide a gauzy window into a mythic patriotic past, when America won wars, built things, and was united. The museum\u2019s uncanny environment is the work of the Collings Foundation, a well-heeled nonprofit that is among the world\u2019s biggest private holders of military armaments.<\/p>\n On a short, steep hill overlooking the tank track stands CEO Rob Collings Jr., a tall, fit man with a wide smile and a penchant for aviator glasses. In advance of my ride, he talks up his impressive roster of equipment, spanning America\u2019s wars, good and bad. \u201cWorld War II is kind of our Super Bowl,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A few yards away, Alfred P. Consigli, a 100-year-old veteran<\/a> of General George S. Patton\u2019s \u201cBlackcat\u201d tank battalion, regales a mostly male crowd with war stories, toggling between valiant D-Day dispatches and blunt admissions of the conflict\u2019s heavy toll. His mother was so racked with worry during his deployment, Consigli says, that it killed her. Listening intently are two young guys in US World War II fatigues and a third in a Nazi SS uniform, yawning. There\u2019s also museum volunteer Leo Orsi, whose Hawaiian shirt depicts a hulking tank relaxing on a beach. I ask Orsi what draws him to all this military hardware. \u201cThe difference between men and boys is the size of the toys,\u201d he quips.<\/p>\n After Consigli is done speaking, an announcer heralds him and his compatriots as brave destroyers of tyranny and concludes by paraphrasing Winston Churchill: \u201cIf we forget our history, we are doomed to repeat it.\u201d A warm round of applause fills the air.<\/p>\n There may be no stronger tool for romanticizing America\u2019s war machine than museums like this one. Museums, after all, are among the nation\u2019s most trusted<\/a> institutions, research shows, for liberals and conservatives alike. As such, the Department of Defense has created, per its 2009 report<\/a> to Congress on the topic, a stable of 93 military museums that at the time were costing taxpayers $94 million a year to operate. (Subsequent numbers were unavailable, and a 2014 law explicitly repealed<\/a> the military\u2019s financial reporting requirements for military museums.) This soft propaganda network frames the military\u2019s work valiantly and helps attract new troops\u2014the 2009 report, for example, noted that the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia is \u201cconsistently used as a successful tool\u201d for recruiters.<\/p>\n The brass also provides exceptional support\u2014and vintage firepower\u2014to hundreds of private military museums, many of them pet projects of the ultra-wealthy. Major collectors include a Microsoft co-founder, a member of the Walmart dynasty, and the founder of the Jelly Belly company, who tried (and failed) to modify one of his tanks to fire jelly beans. The Collings stockpile was amassed through the largesse of Rob\u2019s father, Bob, who invented and manufactured the first standalone electronic cash register<\/a>.<\/p>\n The various museums purport to provide accurate depictions of war\u2014yet even the most clear-eyed exhibits cannot begin to effectively capture the thrumming violence of conflict. \u201cWar museums are like cloud chambers in particle physics,\u201d Yale University history professor Jay Winter, now emeritus, argued in a paper<\/a>. \u201cThey represent the traces and trajectories of collisions that happened a long time ago. They never describe war; they only tell us about its footprints on the map of our lives.\u201d They also tell us how their founders\u2014and funders, including the US government\u2014would have us remember our battles.<\/p>\n Surprisingly weak federal oversight, meanwhile, has allowed museum operators, perhaps hoping to hew closer to a soldier\u2019s lived experience, to revive static artifacts like the Jackson tank. Time and again, the military has failed to properly track demilitarized equipment once it moves beyond the wire and into civilian life. This permissiveness, as we will see, has had deadly consequences. <\/p>\n But collateral damage to civilians may be part of the risk analysis, an acceptable cost of reputational management. Military museums, after all, elevate and abstract our nation\u2019s weaponry, machines that rip skin and shatter bones, into things of beauty\u00a0and gravitas and totems of state power. Just ask President Donald Trump, who, to celebrate his birthday next month, is planning a grand military parade<\/a> of the kind one sees in totalitarian states such as China, North Korea, and Russia\u2014and which is estimated to cost taxpayers up to $45 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n The American Heritage Museum knows its living exhibits can be perilous, as evidenced by the hardcore liability waiver I was presented for my tank experience. Signing it was probably the closest I\u2019ve come to military service. My commitment was 10 minutes, not four years, but still I was relinquishing my wellbeing to an institution with its own motives, pledging not to seek compensation, even via \u201cnegligent acts or omissions,\u201d in the event of gruesome injury or death.<\/p>\n One frustrated former military official I interviewed places the blame squarely on the Pentagon: \u201cThey put these things on an altar, like they\u2019re sanctified,\u201d he told me. \u201cThese are not toys, they are weapons. And yet there\u2019s no accountability. That\u2019s the bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n America got into<\/span> World War II late, as filmmaker Ken Burns emphasizes in one of his myriad historical documentaries<\/a>, but our industrial sector ramped up at lightning speed. The United States ranked 39th in the world in military preparedness in 1939, owing largely to its antiquated reliance on cavalry. By the cessation of hostilities, however, it had produced nearly two-thirds of all military equipment for the Allied forces, including nearly 90,000 tanks, 300,000 planes, and 2 million trucks.<\/p>\n William Knudsen, then president of General Motors, was commissioned directly as a lieutenant general and tasked with overseeing this massive endeavor. \u201cWe won,\u201d he later asserted, \u201cbecause we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which [the Nazis] had never seen nor dreamed possible.\u201d<\/p>\n When peace came, the War Department found itself drowning in $50 billion worth<\/a> of excess gear. The brass responded by creating the Foreign Liquidation Commission and War Assets Administration, which auctioned off equipment to allied militaries and civilian scrappers at 10 surplus offices across the country. The tools of war didn\u2019t always make sense for civilian spaces, but the military made a hard sell, marketing flamethrowers, for instance, to farmers for weed control.<\/p>\n The Pentagon also funneled equipment down a third path: nonprofit military museums, apparently for no other reason than to help burnish and mythologize the image of America and its burgeoning military industrial complex. One early critic of this sort of effort was anarcho-pacifist Ernst Friedrich, who in 1925 set up an anti-war museum in Berlin featuring grotesque images of military violence. (The Nazis later destroyed his creation.) Yale historian Winter endorsed a similarly visceral approach, suggesting in his essay that \u201cfor every weapon on display there is an image or an object pointing to the injury or mayhem that weapon causes to the human body.\u201d<\/p>\n As heavy military gear poured into<\/a> all 50 states, the museums took the opposite approach. Their general ethos \u201cemphasizes technology rather than the context in which the objects were used,\u201d notes an article<\/a> in the Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies<\/em>. Consider the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, which emphasizes America\u2019s \u201carsenal of democracy,\u201d including warplanes and an operational Sherman tank.<\/p>\n One of the most popular artifacts at the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center is a World War II-era Jeep that visitors are invited to touch. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunity to make a physical connection with a part of American military history,\u201d explained Richard Goldenberg, a retired colonel of the New York Army National Guard. The Jeep, he told me, represents America\u2019s lineage and legacy of service: \u201cIt carries a sort of weight and emotional impact.\u201d<\/p>\n The Jeep, of course, is relatively harmless, unlike some items with which the public is allowed to interact. In July 1972, Democratic Sen. John McClellan of Arkansas delved into the Pentagon\u2019s offloading of surplus equipment. He found \u201cinexcusable<\/a>\u201d evidence that automatic weapons, missiles, and sensitive military technology had been sold to questionable figures, including weapons traffickers representing countries \u201cwhose national policies may not be in accord with our own.\u201d The Pentagon, in response, pledged<\/a> to improve its transfer processes.<\/p>\n Time and again, the military has failed to properly track equipment once it moves into civilian life. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n This permissiveness has had deadly consequences. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n Tanks on display at the American Heritage Museum<\/span>American Heritage Museum<\/span><\/p>\n The Collings Foundation <\/span>was born seven years later. Founder Bob Collings lived a relatively frugal life and had little taste for conventional luxury. Despite his wealth, the family lived in a modest house on the outskirts of Stow, Massachusetts, and he ran his company out of an old discount store in a shopping plaza. \u201cWe are not high\u2010living,\u201d he told the\u00a0New York Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in 1977.\u00a0\u201cWe are not big on status symbols.\u201d<\/p>\n But Collings was<\/em>\u00a0big on machines and military history\u2014interests for which he\u00a0spared no expense. He\u2019d moved to Stow in part because of its proximity to the\u00a0Revolutionary War battlefields of Lexington and Concord. Not long after, he purchased a 44,000-foot hangar\u00a0at a nearby airfield and made it his mission to stuff it with as much military equipment as the building could handle.<\/p>\n Some pieces came directly from the Pentagon, others via far-flung sources. In 1986, Collings told<\/a> the Hartford Courant<\/em> that he\u2019d recently bought a B-24 bomber from an Englishman who\u2019d acquired it from the Indian army. He also indicated that he\u2019d salvaged planes the military had abandoned in the Arizona desert and entered into delicate negotiations with the Chinese government for US planes they\u2019d used to fight the Japanese in World War II. The Jackson tank I rode in, driver Mike told me, was once owned by the Czechoslovakian government.<\/p>\n In a written statement, Bob\u2019s son, Rob Collings Jr., said, \u201cWe have no artifacts from China and never have.\u201d He said the Collings Foundation had acquired the Jackson tank \u201cfrom another museum who acquired it from yet another museum, and we were not part of its importation.\u201d He insisted that all the foundation\u2019s pieces had secured the proper government approvals.<\/p>\n After the Cold War, the Pentagon again ramped up its offloading of surplus inventory, even as Congress slashed funding for that endeavor, reducing the number of oversight personnel by more than half. Amid the funding contraction, in 1993, Essam al-Ridi, an Egyptian associate of then-obscure al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, purchased a training jet<\/a> from an Air Force boneyard in Tucson, Arizona, for about $200,000. Its whereabouts remain unknown.<\/p>\n Because most surplus military gear is damaged or in some way demilitarized, civilian rehab efforts have fallen to amateur mechanics like Steve Preston, a gearhead who, along with a fellow weapons enthusiast, was killed in a 2015 freak accident<\/a> while attempting to fire a round from his 1944 Buick \u201cHellcat\u201d tank.\u00a0(He\u2019d purchased it for $60,000, he told<\/a> the Wall Street Journal <\/em>that year, and had been donating tank rides for school and hospital fundraisers.)<\/p>\n Another prominent fixer is \u201cDangerous\u201d Bob Bigando, a former sheriff\u2019s deputy and pyrotechnics expert who lost half a finger to a heavy machine gun in 2004. Among other projects, Bigando has helped revive an M60 tank with a fully functional cannon and mounted<\/a> a six-barreled, Gatling-style Vulcan cannon on a Toyota Prius owned by the Black Rifle Coffee Company<\/a>.\u00a0In 2007, according to the military news outlet Task & Purpose<\/em> and court documents, he was indicted<\/a> on federal charges of transporting illegal explosives, including 4 tons of\u00a0an artillery propellant, to \u201cunlicensed\u201d buyers. A plea agreement reduced the charges to misdemeanors involving possession of the materials and temporarily curtailed Bigando\u2019s right to bear arms, but he was deemed in violation the following year, after agents from the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives caught him with an unlicensed howitzer he hoped to refurbish. (The howitzer was later returned to him, he told Task & Purpose<\/em>. Bigando did not respond to requests for comment.)<\/p>\n Collings restored his own museum pieces himself with the assistance of knowledgeable veterans, such as former B-24 pilot Roland Stumpff, who in 1986 told a Hartford Courant<\/em>\u00a0reporter<\/a>\u00a0that the Collings planes \u201cstill smell the same and they still vibrate and rattle the same.\u201d The Pentagon aided in the museum\u2019s repair efforts, providing replacement parts, while the ATF granted the Collings Foundation a license<\/a> to manufacture destructive devices legally.<\/p>\n In 1996, a joint investigation<\/a> by 60 Minutes<\/em> and US News and World Report<\/em> brought scrutiny upon the mechanics and scrap dealers \u201cdumpster diving\u201d for parts that weren\u2019t properly demilitarized:\u00a0\u201cYou can build yourself an army out of this stuff that\u2019s miscoded,\u201d a Pentagon investigator warned.<\/p>\n The investigation showed that the military not only sold dangerous equipment, but also failed to monitor its whereabouts\u2014in one case, an Air Force surplus office in Georgia lost track of $39 million worth of materiel. Foreign governments such as China, Iraq, and Iran took advantage of the weak oversight, as did backwoods operators like Montana helicopter mechanic Ron Garlick<\/a>, who used spare parts to build complex weapons systems, including a Cobra attack helicopter. \u201cMine was fully armed,\u201d he boasted to a reporter. \u201cI had rockets on it and machine guns. I was out there shooting coyotes with them.\u201d<\/p>\n The expos\u00e9 prompted Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to revisit McClellan\u2019s earlier hearings, and, in 1999, relitigate the issue during an appropriations debate<\/a>. \u201cNothing has really changed,\u201d he concluded, except that the equipment was now available via the internet. \u201cSome of Saddam Hussein\u2019s henchmen,\u201d Grassley warned, \u201ccould be browsing this homepage, looking for spare parts or new weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n The Army vowed to improve its demilitarization processes, but created only one new position to do it. A bill calling for aggressive inspections and seizures of improperly demilitarized gear died amid fierce opposition from veterans groups, weapons enthusiasts, and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Garlick got to keep<\/a> his Cobra, which he rented to the TV show Pensacola: Wings of Gold<\/em>. (Garlick did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/p>\n In the ensuing decades, federal watchdogs have issued a slew of reports on demilitarization lapses, including a 2006 analysis that said military museums writ large represented the most significant source of improper equipment \u201cleakage\u201d into the world. The surplus program, the reports note again and again, is plagued by confusing and inaccurate demilitarization codes, poor funding, and overlapping jurisdictions\u2014problems that are likely to be exacerbated by the Trump administration\u2019s budget cuts.<\/p>\n The military museum network itself may be spared, however. While the White House moved to gut the Institute of Museum and Library Services, most military museums appear to fall under the purview of the Pentagon, which has faced relatively little budgetary scrutiny, despite being the largest\u2014and most famously inept<\/a>\u2014federal agency.<\/p>\n Although the Pentagon did not respond to questions for this story, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has previously expressed support for military museums as a bulwark against supposed left-wing efforts to erase history. In April 2022, as a weekend anchor for Fox & Friends<\/em>, Hegseth ventured<\/a> to the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia. Cameras rolling, he walked excitedly around an exhibit, pointing to a helicopter from Vietnam, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle from Iraq, and more. He hyped the museum as \u201cincredibly accurate\u201d and \u201clarger than life.\u201d<\/p>\n His report concluded with a sales pitch: \u201cIt\u2019s free of charge, it\u2019s outside the post, it\u2019s only an hour south of Atlanta.\u201d<\/p>\n As I completed my first bumpy loop in the Jackson tank, I spotted the American Heritage Museum\u2019s heavy equipment garage and what appeared to be a shrink-wrapped fighter jet just outside. Air shows are a particularly lucrative revenue stream for military museums, with an estimated annual attendance of 10 to 12 million. These were once strictly spectator events, but the American Heritage Museum sought to offer its attendees a more visceral experience.<\/p>\n The dangers were clear enough. In June 1993, a Collings pilot had crashed a World War II-era Douglas A-26 Invader in Kankakee, Illinois. (No one was hurt or killed in the crash, which was attributed to engine failure<\/a>.) Three years later, the foundation secured its first waiver<\/a> under the Federal Aviation Administration\u2019s fledgling Living History Flight Experience program to fly historic planes carrying members of the public.<\/p>\n One of the two greenlit planes was the B-17 Flying Fortress, which dropped more Allied bombs during World War II than any other warbird. Collings then began pressing the military to give him an F-4 Phantom fighter jet. The Pentagon\u2019s inspector general raised urgent concerns<\/a>, noting that a number of decommissioned jets had crashed in recent years, leaving dozens of people dead and injured. There were other red flags. For one, the Collings Foundation was not on the Air Force\u2019s list of approved military museums.<\/p>\n But Collings had connections. In 1998, Congress specifically granted the Air Force secretary authority to give the F-4 to his foundation, so long as it was incapable of firing munitions. Internal correspondence obtained by Mother Jones <\/em>reveals that some Air Force officials were unsure how to proceed because there was \u201cno regulatory guidance on \u2018flyable demil.\u2019\u201d Others griped over the cost of the transfer, and Air Force lawyers were \u201creluctant from the beginning to put an aircraft out in the public due to concerns, if someone got hurt, there was no one to sue.\u201d<\/p>\n Compounding the concerns were indications that Collings wanted to fly the F-4 without ejection seats. He also pushed for swift delivery. \u201cIf Mr. Collings is pressuring [the government] based on his marketing and advertising commitments tell him to call me and I\u2019ll deal with it,\u201d one Air Force official replied to a colleague who\u2019d indicated that he was under the gun to meet Collings\u2019 delivery deadline for an air show. Rob Collings said his father had \u201cno recollection\u201d of this air show. He added that \u201cwe have always had ejection seats\u201d and stressed that the process involved \u201cno cost to the government,\u201d as the foundation fully reimbursed the Pentagon for the plane\u2019s regeneration.<\/p>\n In Collings\u2019 court was retired Brigadier General Stephen Ritchie<\/a>, a decorated Vietnam War fighter pilot who later helped lead the Air Force\u2019s recruitment efforts. At one point, Ritchie attempted to quell his colleagues\u2019 concerns, writing to a fellow general on Collings letterhead\u00a0that the F-4 would have \u201ca very positive impact\u2026given the need to recruit high caliber personnel into the Air Force.\u201d<\/p>\n Collings had pledged<\/a> to use the jet in shows to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Air Force and to memorialize Vietnam veterans. The foundation has since launched other explicitly pro-military exhibits<\/a> and events. In 2012, it would partner with the Boy Scouts<\/a> on a program in which scouts helped restore armored vehicles and educated the public about their importance in military history.<\/p>\n By the fall of 1999, Collings had the F-4 in hand. The next year, he struck a similar deal<\/a> with the Navy and was deeded\u2014thanks to another snippet of legislation\u2014a McDonnell Douglas TA-4J Skyhawk, which the FAA ultimately blessed to fly.<\/p>\n Collings continued pushing the FAA, mostly successfully, to exempt his foundation from regulations. In 2005, he got the green light to fly the old planes in reduced visibility conditions, in congested airways, and over more densely populated areas than federal standards typically allow. The agency also kept adding new flyable aircraft, 10 in all, to the Collings roster. Only once did the FAA, in 2011, give the foundation a hard no\u2014in response to its campaign to let civilian passengers \u201cmanipulate the controls\u201d of vintage warbirds during aerial maneuvers. Rob Collings, Bob\u2019s son and CEO of the foundation, said that the Living History flights previously had allowed this activity and that \u201can appropriately rated pilot\u201d would always be \u201cin actual command of the aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n Frustrated by the rejection, Rob Collings sent a message to the museum\u2019s supporters asking them to deluge the government with letters and lamenting the \u201cFAA and Department of Defense hostility<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n As the Collings Foundation\u2019s<\/span> air fleet grew, so too did its ground arsenal. In 2013, it secured<\/a>, for free, 240 pieces of military equipment with an estimated value exceeding $38 million. The cache had belonged to Jacques Littlefield, an eccentric Silicon Valley engineer and scion of the construction family that built the Hoover Dam.<\/p>\n Littlefield, who died in 2009<\/a>, was a pugnacious libertarian and member of the exclusive Bohemian Club, which has had many military commanders on its rolls. He was a reliable supporter of Republican political candidates, and his military hardware collection included pieces of both legitimate and illicit provenance.\u00a0A 1994 shipping invoice shows that the Army sent him an M60 combat tank via railcar from its clearinghouse. He also secured a fully functional German Panzer V Panther<\/a> from Poland. (Documents indicate that the Polish government requested FBI \u201cassistance\u201d with the tank around 2014, and the case was closed.)<\/p>\n In the mid-1990s, Littlefield secured four other fully functioning combat vehicles, including an anti-tank personnel carrier with a missile launcher and a Sheridan tank. Unbeknownst to him, they\u2019d all been stolen<\/a> from Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. In 1996, FBI Agent Ted Warsky told the Chicago Tribune<\/em> that the government had accounted for the $13 million in purloined equipment, but only one-third of it had been returned to the base.<\/p>\n The stolen Sheridan<\/a> and the Polish Panther<\/a> ultimately ended up in the Collings collection. \u201cAs you say, the FBI case was closed on the Panther,\u201d Rob Collings said. \u201cI have no knowledge of the Sheridan being \u2018stolen.\u2019\u201d The McCoy carrier and its missile launcher were sold for $92,000 to a private bidder at a 2014 Sotheby\u2019s auction<\/a>. That same year, a state-run military museum in California was shut down<\/a> after an audit found that several key artifacts had disappeared, including \u201ca Vietnam War-era helicopter, a couple of machine guns, and a Russian howitzer.\u201d A similar phenomenon was playing out with smaller arms. According to an Associated Press investigation<\/a>, at least 1,900 US military firearms were lost or stolen during the 2010s. Some were later used in violent crimes.<\/p>\n There have only been a few known instances of people rampaging with heavy military equipment. In 1974, an Army private stole a Bell UH-1B \u201cHuey\u201d Vietnam War-era helicopter and landed it on the South Lawn of the White House before he was wounded and taken into custody. In 1995, a mentally ill Army veteran stole a tank from a National Guard armory and tore through San Diego, crushing cars but killing no one.<\/p>\n Far more common are injuries and deaths stemming from malfunctions or misuse of surplus equipment. The last decade or so has seen a string of accidents, including at least two<\/a> fatal<\/a> plane crashes last year. In 2015, the same year tinkerer Steve Preston and his colleague died in their Hellcat mishap, the husband of Jelly Belly\u2019s CEO accidentally crushed<\/a> a man to death while driving one of their World War II-era tanks during a family reunion. In 2019, amateur pilot Joseph Masessa, a New Jersey dermatologist, died<\/a> when he crashed his Grumman OV-1 Mohawk at a Florida air show.<\/p>\n But the worst accident that year involved the Collings Flying Fortress.<\/p>\n On a chilly morning<\/span> in October 2019, the American Heritage Museum\u2019s annual 110-city Wings of Freedom tour landed at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. By then, the museum had been taking passengers aloft for more than two decades. The main attraction was the Flying Fortress flown by Ernest \u201cMac\u201d McCauley, considered the country\u2019s most experienced B-17 pilot. He welcomed 10 passengers that day aboard the clunky plane, which had malfunctioned during previous flights and had, it turned out, spark plug issues and engine damage.<\/p>\n McCauley struggled at first to get the plane off the ground, as the fourth engine wouldn\u2019t start. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing to worry about,\u201d his co-pilot assured passengers, according to a since-settled lawsuit; this was \u201cnormal\u201d under humid and wet conditions. Their pilot was a pro, after all, having logged more than 7,000 hours on this vintage craft. After about 40 minutes, McCauley finally got the B-17 purring. It revved down the runway, reaching for the sky.<\/p>\n After the warbird was aloft, as detailed in a post-crash report<\/a> from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the \u201cloadmaster\u201d\u2014the crew member who ensures the safe distribution of weight on an aircraft\u2014let the passengers know they were free to get up and move around. Soon after, with the plane about 600 feet off the ground, one of the pilots alerted air traffic control that they were turning back to the airport \u201cbecause of a rough magneto,\u201d a generator that ensures proper firing of the spark plugs.<\/p>\n The approach controller asked whether the pilot needed assistance.<\/p>\n \u201cNegative,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n Upon realizing that the plane was no longer ascending, McCauley ordered his co-pilot to extend the landing gear, and the loadmaster went to tell the passengers to sit down and strap in. When the loadmaster returned to the cockpit, McCauley announced that the plane\u2019s No. 4 engine was losing power. He then shut down that engine and feathered the propeller blades\u2014turning the narrow edges into the wind to minimize drag.<\/p>\n The B-17 came in toward the airport on a rightward tilt. It hit the approach lights 1,000 feet short of the runway and the ground 500 feet later. Veering onto the edge of the runway and then off to the right, it collided with vehicles and a de-icing tank before finally coming to a stop. \u201cA postcrash fire ensued,\u201d the report notes. The pilot, co-pilot, and five passengers were killed.<\/p>\n The NTSB report pins much of the blame on pilot error but details a litany of contributing factors, including maintenance and training failures and \u201cineffective<\/a>\u201d oversight. It points out that the safety inspector the FAA deputized to oversee Collings had never conducted inspections, serving only as a point of contact for regulatory questions\u2014and that when the inspector died in 2017, he was never replaced.<\/p>\n The Collings Foundation expressed condolences to the families. A week later<\/a>, it launched a campaign to pressure the FAA to let it keep its planes in the air. \u201cWe need to let federal agencies know that the [Living History] program is important to you and other American citizens as an educational tool,\u201d Rob Collings wrote to supporters.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t enough. On March 25, 2020, the FAA revoked foundation\u2019s ability to operate Living History flights. Collings is still accredited to train pilots on a pair of historic planes, even though, in September 2023, a \u201chighly experienced pilot in a WWI aircraft\u201d crashed the single-engine plane in Stow, near the American Heritage Museum. (No one was hurt.)<\/p>\n In 2021, the Department of Transportation pledged \u201cenhanced oversight<\/a> of the Living History Flight Experience.\u201d Almost exactly a year later, a different B-17 permitted under the program collided with another historic military aircraft at a Dallas air show, killing\u00a0six people.<\/a>\u00a0Both planes belonged to the Commemorative Air Force (formerly Confederate Air Force), another major operator<\/a> of military museums with its own<\/a> checkered<\/a> safety<\/a> record<\/a>. Earlier in 2022, another Huey helicopter\u2014the same machine used in the films Baywatch<\/em>, Die Hard<\/em>, and The Rock<\/em>\u2014had crashed<\/a> during a tourist flight in West Virginia, killing all six aboard.<\/p>\n Military museums elevate and abstract our nation\u2019s weaponry, turning machines that rip skin and shatter bones into toys for the rich. <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n They also risk armaments slipping into the wrong hands: A 2006 analysis found military museums writ large represented the most significant source of improper equipment \u201cleakage.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n Aircraft inside the Collings Foundation’s hangar<\/span>David L. Ryan\/The Boston Globe\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n The planes that<\/span> flew in the Wings of Freedom tour are now on static display in the American Heritage Museum\u2019s massive hangar. After my tank ride, I walk over to visit the old warbirds, stuffed between revisionist exhibits on the Vietnam War and 9\/11. Afterward, in the gift shop, I strike up a conversation with Nolan and Owen, two 16-year-olds decked out in Army fatigues.\u00a0<\/p>\n They\u2019d spent their day re-enacting a World War II battle as members of the 101st Airborne. And they had taken a spin in a Sherman tank. The boys told me their interest in re-enactments is motivated by a reverence for military service and because the cosplay evokes the mock battles they staged in their backyards as young kids\u2014only, as Nolan notes, \u201cwith actual equipment and a bunch of older guys.\u201d<\/p>\n The romanticized and sanitized version of World War II that resonates with Nolan and Owen doesn\u2019t translate to America\u2019s more recent conflicts. \u201cNothing that we\u2019re doing today is worth dying for, like World War II,\u201d Nolan says. \u201cBombing a random village in Africa is not worth dying for.\u201d<\/p>\n Owen nods. He\u2019s familiar with \u201crealities of war,\u201d like the veteran mental health crisis, he says. Still, he\u2019s assembling a modern war re-enactment kit<\/a> with period-appropriate fatigues and equipment. Nolan makes the case that very few post-9\/11 battles are worth re-creating, thanks to their moral murkiness and the rise of drone warfare. \u201cIt\u2019s less humane in some ways,\u201d he says. \u201cIt feels like a war crime a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n Hearing them talk makes me wonder whether Collings\u2019 American Heritage Museum or some other military museum might one day get its hands on our current fleet of war machines\u2014perhaps a fully functional MQ-9 Reaper drone.<\/p>\n The thought sends a shiver down my spine. But I don\u2019t deny that I\u2019d donate $195 to fly one.<\/p>\n Jasper Craven is a co-author of the 2022 book <\/em>Our Veterans: Winners, Losers, Friends, and Enemies on the New Terrain of Veterans Affairs<\/a> and author of the upcoming title\u00a0<\/em>God Forgives, Brothers Don\u2019t, to be published by Simon & Schuster in early 2026.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/military-museum-section-break.png\")
![](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AHM_2023_48.jpg\"\/)
<\/figure>\n![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/GettyImages-1451406869.jpg\")
![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/20060210_zaf_s70_007.jpg\")
![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/20250526_militarymusems_4.jpg\")
![\"Burned](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AP21168628373914.jpg\")
![](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/GettyImages-1176008732.jpg\"\/)
<\/figure>\n
<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n