Travis Air Force Base Aviation Museum
aviation museum in Fairfield, California

The Travis Air Force Base Aviation Museum (former names include Travis Air Museum, Jimmy Doolittle Air & Space Museum, and Travis Air Force Base Heritage Center) is an aviation museum located at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California. The museum houses 35+ aircraft displays and various other informative artifacts.
History
In 1982, at the request of Col Tony Burshnick, Commander, 60th Military Airlift Wing, Travis Air Force Base and a group of aviation enthusiasts, most of whom are retired Air Force members, established the Travis Air Force Base Historical Society, a non-profit, tax-exempt organization, for the purpose of creating an air museum on base. The following year, the Travis Air Museum was established with the approval of the Secretary of the Air Force and Public Affairs, albeit with no facility. The mission of the museum was to help preserve the heritage of the Air Force, the history of Travis Air Force Base and airlift in the Pacific. The Society then began a vigorous campaign to obtain aircraft and other artifacts for the museum. When the old commissary on base was vacated in 1986, Col John Tait, Commander, 60th Military Airlift Wing, Travis Air Force Base, made it available to house the accumulated artifacts. Within a year, Travis Air Force Base museum officially became the Travis Air Museum.
In 1989, the museum planned to recover the B-17 Swamp Ghost from Papua New Guinea.
In the spring of 2001, with the blessing of the Jimmy Doolittle family and Lieutenant General Ronald C. Marcotte, Vice Commander, Air Mobility Command, the foundation's request to rename the new Travis Air Force Base Museum in honor of the late General (Ret) James H. Doolittle was approved.
The public source identifies “Travis Air Force Base Aviation Museum” as aviation museum in Fairfield, California. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Travis, Force and Base.
Why this record matters
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6200006. Authority coordinates are 38.270, -121.932. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 1986, 1989 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Travis Air Force Base Aviation Museum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.