Not all the exhibits are outside. The 20,000 square foot Hangar One protects the more fragile fabric-covered aircraft. A former WWII barracks houses WWII displays and a collection of model airplanes. Yet another building houses a pristine B-17 Flying Fortress in honor of the 390th Bomb Group. Photos of virtually all the 390th's flight crews line the walls, along with other special mementos from the air war over Europe more than 50 years ago.

Hangar Number Three houses a collection of WWII bombers, transports and fighter aircraft, including a featured B-24 Liberator bomber. Hangar Number Four houses the museum's showpiece B-29 Superfortress bomber and still more WWII airplanes. I saw a new hangar under construction that already had an SR-71 Blackbird in residence.

Discovery is the order of the day here. I'd forgotten all about the USAF's exotic B-58 Hustler doublesonic bomber of the late 1950s until I ran into one there at Pima. I remember singer John Denver saying that his dad, Lt.Col. Dutch Deutschendorf, had set a US transcontinental speed record in this plane.

And what's that over there? What is an F-107A for gosh sakes? It looks like an F-100 with a pointy nose and air intake shoved up on top of its shoulders. Sort of the Hunchback of Pima Air and Space Museum. It turns out to be a "close but no cigar" plane from North American that lost out to Republic's F-105 Lead Sled. Ok, make that Thunderchief if you're not on a first name basis with that fine plane. By the way, according to Pima, the original cost of an F-107A was about what you'd pay today for an old Cessna 172 built about the same time as the F-107.

And over there is a pre-war B-23 Dragon. Say, huh? Well, you just have to see it. And way over there is a really big twinjet cargo plane called the Boeing YC-14. This STOL monster found a home here at Pima after losing a head-to-head competition with the current USAF C-17. Not all the planes here are American-built, by the way. Pima has a nice collection of MiGs, including several -15s, a couple of -17s and a -21. Plus a Brit Harrier and more.

I've always been interested in figuring out the difference between theFairchild C-82 Packet and the nearly identical-looking C-119 Flying Boxcar. Don't know? Pima has a C-82 and two C-119s you can study.

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