What it is
The Commemorative Air Force’s Airbase Arizona is a museum of Second World War aircraft that still fly, on the east side of Falcon Field in northeast Mesa. The CAF is a national volunteer organization, founded in Texas in 1961, whose units keep warbirds airworthy and take them to air shows; the Arizona unit broke ground here in 1977 and opened its museum in 1978. Its name is used two ways, Airbase Arizona on the hangar and the Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum on the paperwork; either will get you there.
The two aircraft everyone comes for are a B-17G Flying Fortress called Sentimental Journey, one of a handful of B-17s still flying anywhere, and a B-25J Mitchell bomber called Maid in the Shade. Both are maintained by volunteers, tour the country’s air shows for much of the year and, when they are home, carry paying passengers on ride flights out of Falcon Field. The hangars around them hold a C-47 Skytrain, a P-51 Mustang, an SBD Dauntless, a TBF Avenger, a PV-2 Harpoon, an A-26 Invader, an F-4 Phantom, a MiG-21, two Vietnam helicopters, a pair of First World War replicas and, since 2025, an AV-8B Harrier on long-term loan.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Because no other museum in the Valley has exhibits that take off. Scottsdale’s own aviation story is told at Thunderbird Field II, the 1942 flight school that became Scottsdale Airport, but the airplanes are gone; here the same era is parked on the ramp with its engines warm. For a visitor with any interest in the war, or a child with any interest in machines, this is a better two hours than most of what the museums note lists, and the drive is thirty minutes.
The practical version
Thirty minutes from Old Town via the 101, the 202 east and Greenfield Road. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM. Admission is modest; open-cockpit tours and ride flights cost more. Check the flight schedule first, because the bombers are often away between spring and fall. Two hours is enough; the volunteers will happily make it three.
When to go
Late fall through early spring is when the flying aircraft are most often home at Falcon Field, between the air-show tours, and the museum is at its best with the B-17 on the ramp. Open-cockpit days, announced on the calendar, let you climb into several aircraft for a small extra charge. Mornings are the flying hours; if you have booked a ride, it will likely be at 9 or 10 AM, when the air is smooth. Summer afternoons in the hangars are hot despite the fans; go at opening.
The ride
The museum sells seats on both bombers. The B-17 ride is the history: you sit where the radio operator and waist gunners sat, and once airborne you can move through the fuselage to the nose. The B-25 is louder and smaller and the nose seat has the better view. Both are expensive by museum standards and sell out when the aircraft are home, so book weeks ahead. If a ride is beyond the budget, the engine starts and taxi are free to watch from the fence.
With kids
Older children do well here; the aircraft are close, the volunteers are patient and the story is concrete. Bring hearing protection on a day when engines are running. Pair the museum with Organ Stop Pizza, twenty minutes south near the 60, which is the right dinner for an airplane day; our kids note has the rest of the Scottsdale side.
The story
Falcon Field exists because of Hollywood and the Royal Air Force. In 1941 a company called Southwest Airways, founded by the producer Leland Hayward and the pilot Jack Connelly with money from a roster of movie-industry investors, was building civilian-contract flight schools in the Arizona desert for the Army. The Mesa field was planned as Thunderbird Field III, but the British, who needed somewhere with reliable weather to train pilots away from the Luftwaffe, asked for it, and for a bird name of their own. Ground broke on July 16, 1941; the first RAF cadets arrived in September as No. 4 British Flying Training School, and the field trained British pilots for the rest of the war. Some of the cadets who died in training are buried in Mesa’s cemetery. After the war the City of Mesa bought the field from the government for a dollar.
The Commemorative Air Force, then the Confederate Air Force, was founded in Texas in 1961 by pilots who bought surplus fighters before anyone thought to save them. By the mid-1970s the organization had a B-17G, and a group of Arizona members talked the city into a lease at Falcon Field; they broke ground in 1977 and opened the museum in 1978. Sentimental Journey, restored in Mesa, became one of the most photographed B-17s in the world and still tours each year. The collection grew by donation and loan, from the Second World War through Vietnam to the 2025 arrival of a Harrier.
The Scottsdale connection
Southwest Airways built Thunderbird Field II north of Scottsdale in the spring of 1942, less than a year after Falcon Field, and the two schools trained in the same sky over the same desert; the Thunderbird Field II guide tells how 5,500 American cadets went through Scottsdale’s field in Stearman biplanes before it became the city’s airport. The 1940s page has the Valley-wide picture. Falcon Field is where that story still has airplanes in it.
Getting there
The 101 south to the 202 (Red Mountain Freeway) east, exit Greenfield Road, south about a mile; the museum is on the right, on the east side of the airport, just north of McKellips Road. Thirty minutes from Old Town; from North Scottsdale, Shea Boulevard east to the Beeline Highway and the 202 is about the same. The day-trips note puts the museum on the way to the Superstitions and the Apache Trail, which is the right way to use it: the museum in the morning, Lost Dutchman or Goldfield after lunch.