Yankee Air Museum The Yankee Air Museum is an aviation museum located at Willow Run Airport in Van Buren Charter Township , Michigan . The museum has a small fleet of flying aircraft and a collection of static display aircraft outdoors . History . The Yankee Air Force Inc . was founded in 1981 to pursue these goals : Rebuilding physically and organizationally . On the night of October 9 , 2004 , the Yankee Air Museum ' s hangar on the northeast side of Willow Run Airport ( KYIP ) burned down . The B - 17 , B - 25 and C - 47 were saved through heroic efforts by museum volunteers . The Stinson was at another hangar . Everything else inside the hangar was destroyed , including the original prototype North American Y OV - 10A Bronco , Waco CG - 4A Glider , a former Thunderbirds Republic F - 105 , Aero L - 39 , Link Trainer , artifacts , spare parts , tools , and the Museum ' s library . Rebuilding plans were underway within days and in 2008 , the museum transitioned from being a membership club to a director - driven organization with an 11 - member board . The objective of the museum ' s fundraising arm , the Michigan Aerospace Foundation , was to build a greatly expanded , state - of - the - art aviation museum and aerospace facility to replace the lost facility . Ground was broken for a new museum building in April 2007 . In 2009 , museum purchased a building from the Michigan Institute of Aviation and Technology ( MIAT ) , on D Street to the east of the airfield , intended as the new home of the museum collection . In summer 2010 , the museum opened the David and Andrea Robertson Education Center in a 1938 schoolhouse that had been moved from another part of the Willow Run complex . This had been the officers ' club for the USAAF detachments stationed at Willow Run during the war , and was apparently the schoolhouse for the boys living at Henry Ford ' s Willow Run Farm ( a social experiment that used the Willow Run site in 1939 and 1940 before the airfield and industrial complex were ever conceived ) . The museum reopened to the public on October 10 , 2010 , six years to the day after the fire . This allowed the museum to vacate Hangar Two , which had recently been condemned by the Wayne County Airport Authority . In April 2013 , the " Detroit Free Press " confirmed that the RACER Trust is negotiating with the museum , which has a limited amount of time to raise the funds needed to purchase a portion of the original , historic Willow Run Bomber Plant as a new home for the museum . Willow Run bomber plant as a new home for the museum . In April 2013 , the " Detroit Free Press " confirmed that the facility ' s current owner , RACER Trust , was in negotiations with the Yankee Air Museum . Yankee was originally granted until August 2013 to raise the funds needed to purchase and separate a small portion of Ford ' s historically significant Willow Run Bomber Plant , which produced over 8 , 600 B - 24 Liberator bombers during World War II , and later became part of what was the GM Powertrain facility . The museum would consolidate operations scattered on various parcels at Willow Run Airport into the 1941 landmark , designed by Albert Kahn , with the trust seeking to clear the remainder of the plant for redevelopment . The campaign to save a portion of Willow Run for the Yankee Air Museum is called SaveTheBomberPlant . org , and is centered on a fundraising website by the same name . The campaign has attracted national and international attention from media outlets that include National Public Radio , The History Channel magazine , National Geographic TV , The Guardian ( UK ) , and the ( UK ) Daily Mail . After extending the fundraising deadline to Oct . 1 on July 31 , 2013 , RACER Trust and the Yankee Air Museum again reached a deadline extension agreement , announced on Sept . 27 2013 . The new deadline to raise the funds necessary to preserve a portion of the Willow Run plant for the Yankee Air Museum is Nov . 1 , 2013 . As of Sept . 27 , 2013 , The Yankee Air Museum has raised $ 5 million of the $ 8 million fundraising goal , the majority of which reflects separation costs to make the preserved portion of the plant viable as a standalone structure . Building owner RACER Trust is supportive the campaign , even reconfiguring engineering and demolition plans to save cost for the museum . Meantime , the remaining portion of the Willow Run complex , which includes over 95 % of the of the historic building , has been sold to Walbridge , Inc . for redevelopment as a connected vehicle research and test facility . RACER Trust will demolish this portion of the building prior to turning the property over to Walbridge . Preparations for demolition of Willow Run Assembly facility , with the exception of the portion that the Yankee Air Museum is campaigning to save , are currently observed to be underway . Collection . The Yankee Air Museum ' s Collections & Exhibits building coves of floor space and houses permanent and rotating aviation and historical displays , restoration projects , a retail store and a movie theatre that is available to the public . It is also home to Yankee Air Museum staff and volunteers and has meeting rooms and banquet facilities for rent , machine shops and storage space for the museum collection . An outside area next to the museum is the new home of the air park . From 2007 until August 2011 the Yankee Air Museum ' s flyable aircraft were hangared at the Township Airport at Grosse Ile , Michigan . The Museum ' s flyable aircraft include : The Museum Airpark also contains a number of retired aircraft . These aircraft include :