Lee and Karen Duquette
visited The U.S. Airborne Museum
100 Bragg Boulevard
Fayetteville, NC 28301
May 3, 2022

The United States Army Airborne and Special Operations Museum is part of the U.S. Army Museum Enterprise dedicated to preserving and teaching a public history of the Special Operations and Airborne community, as well as broader United States military history. Located on Fort Bragg, but geographically separate from the main installation, it has been open to the public in nearby downtown Fayetteville, North Carolina since 2000. The facility is staffed primarily by civilians and volunteers on a day to day basis, but remains owned and administered by the Army through the U.S. Army Center of Military History, a part of Training and Doctrine Command.

Below: Outside of the museum - General Henry Hugh Shelton Statue

Below: Military Qualifications and Awards to General Henry Hugh Shelton and his Key assignments

Below: IRON MIKE

Iron Mike is the de facto name of various monuments commemorating servicemen of the United States military. The term "Iron Mike" is uniquely American slang used to refer to men who are especially tough, brave, and inspiring; it was originally a nautical term for a gyrocompass, used to keep a ship on an unwavering course. Because the use of the slang term was popular in the first half of the 20th century, many statues from that period acquired the Iron Mike nickname, and over the generations the artists' titles were largely forgotten. Even official military publications and classroom texts tend to prefer the nickname to the original title

Below: Views of the outside of the U.S. Airborne Museum as seen by the two RV Gypsies while walking away from Iron Mike.

Below: A banner on the outside of the building

Below: A tribute to Iron Mike inside the building

The doors opened on 16 August 2000, the 60th anniversary of the original Test Platoon’s first parachute jump. The museum offers free admission, a main exhibit gallery, temporary gallery, four-story tall theater, a gift shop, and a motion simulator ride that features two experiences. Admission is free, and donations are accepted in the gift shop and in donation boxes in the lobby. The main gallery is designed as a self-guided tour, in chronological order, through the history of airborne and special operations soldiers from 1940 to the present. The temporary gallery changes periodically and displays a myriad of exhibits pertaining to the United States Army airborne and special operations units through their history and conflicts from World War II to the present.

Below: A tribute to the Military K9

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