Joe Davies Heritage Airpark

Today we hit the high desert to visit the Joe Davies Heritage Airpark in Palmdale. 

Although the open-air museum is free, it’s jam-packed with a priceless collection of beautiful and important airplanes.

The park is owned by the City of Palmdale. It’s named after Joe Davies, a local who commanded Building 42 in the mid-60’s, in the heart of the Skunkworks days, and also served as a city councilman.

To get in, you have to walk right down the maw of a huge jet-engine intake. It’s cool, because it’s actually two intake fairings mounted back-to-back.

Once inside, you’ll be amazed at the sheer number, and quality, of the planes on display.

Right out of the box you’ll find a pair of NASA-owned aircraft – a Lockheed Jetstar, and a Canadair Sabre CL-15. 

There are over a dozen jets here, including this McDonnell Douglas F-101 Voodoo. In fact, the Century Series is pretty well represented, with this Republic F-100 Super Saber, the F-101, a Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, and a Republic F-105 Thunderchief. 

It was fun to compare the super-high stance of the F-105 with the crouched  approach of the F-104. 

That’s one of the best parts about the Joe Davies Memorial AIrpark – these are really spectacular pieces of aviation history.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never stood inside the wheel well of a B-52 before. The bay itself is fenced off, but you can see right inside the lower fuselage of this huge jet bomber. She’s on stands, of course, and you can see the brakes are not quite set.

And here’s something you wouldn’t know unless you’re a fan of the BUFF: it doesn’t have a nose wheel! The massive weight of the whole ship sits on these eight, huge tires.

The BUFF’s age can be seen out here in the tail, where she still carries a quad set of 50 caliber machine guns. That’s a leftover from World War II, when air battles were fought with guns instead of missiles. 

These planes are not quite the original deal – they’re cobbled together from parts of other airframes. They look accurate, but a serial-number check won’t make it through the DMV. 

Because of that feature, Joe Davies offers another unique feature: Adopt-a-Plane. You can sponsor the restoration of these beautiful pieces of aviation history, either in part or in total. 

The star of the show for me is this positively ginormous Boeing 747 SCA, or Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. Like the B-52, I can’t quite put my finger on the last time I put my hands on a 747’s landing gear.

This SCA is one of two 747s specifically modified to ferry the space shuttle from its west-coast landing strip at Edwards to its East Coast Cape Canaveral launch facility. That it’s here is utterly amazing.

Another amazing site, and one that gave us the heebie-jeebies, was that Rockwell B-1B Lancer sitting out there on the tarmac. Although she looks ready to go, we were advised that she may very well be ready to go only into the Joe Davies collection.

There are lots of favorites to find here, from the mighty McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II to the Northrop T-38, or the really nicely finished Grumman F-14 Tomcat.

Like most other open-air museums, Joe Davies doesn’t feature a gift store. It’s a tour-on-your own kind of place, and easily worth an hour or two to visit.

To find it, just take the Rancho Vista offramp from Highway 14 east until you see that huge 747.

You can take a tour of our tour by watching the YouTube video, here.