One of MKE Airport’s unique features is the Mitchell Gallery of Flight, a museum in the main terminal that is free and open to the public 24/7. The museum was a vision of local aviation historian George Hardie Jr., who spoke to the county about showcasing the aviation history of Southeastern Wisconsin. After a couple of years of fundraising, the Friends of the Mitchell Gallery of Flight, a volunteer organization, opened the museum doors in 1988. In 2020, the terminal was remodeled and the museum moved to its current location.
Bill Streicher from the Mitchell Gallery of Flight helps oversee the museum displays of local aviation pioneers, dating back to John G. Kaminski, who became Wisconsin’s first licensed pilot in 1912. Paintings show the progression of the airport from 1926 into the ’50s, with new buildings and runways, populated by increasingly large, aerodynamic airplanes.
There are also artifacts related to airport namesake Brig. Gen. William Mitchell, who lived in West Allis, and late pilot and astronaut James Lovell, who grew up in Milwaukee, as well as dozens of other aviators and companies from the region who have had an impact on the flight industry.
Streicher says the museum is “always looking for new things and different areas to dig into,” and cites as an example a more recent addition to the museum: a display honoring Lt. Alfred Gorham, Wisconsin’s only member of World War II’s Tuskegee Airmen, that was added in 2020.
As we head into Milwaukee Airport’s 100th year, here are a few highlights from the Mitchell Gallery of Flight’s collection:
A Scrap of Sweetheart
Framed here is a piece of rudder fabric from Sweetheart, a 1912 Curtiss Pusher plane owned and flown by John G. Kaminski (1893-1960), who became Wisconsin’s first licensed pilot when he was just 18. He earned the qualification, in part, by flying two sets of figure eights. Just down the hall from the museum is a replica of a similar Curtiss Pusher, hanging from the ceiling above the information desk.
Portrait of William Mitchell
“I can remember this painting being on display in the terminal building when I was growing up. It was in the ticketing area,” Bill Streicher says of this portrait of airport namesake Brig. Gen. William “Billy” Mitchell (1879-1936), completed in 1958. “Luckily it survived all this time.”
Mitchell was the son of a Wisconsin senator. He was born in France but grew up in West Allis and went on to serve in the Army Signal Corps in Alaska and the Philippines in the early 1900s.
“He actually paid for his own flying lessons and became one of the first military aviators in the Army,” Streicher says. During World War I, Mitchell led the Joint Aviation Military Forces in Europe. An advocate of military air power, he promoted the idea that airplanes alone could sink a battleship, a theory that was later put to the test and conclusively proven in World War II.
“Milwaukee was very proud of the fact that he was from here,” Streicher says. “That’s why the County Board decided in 1941 that they would name the Milwaukee County Airport after him.”
Other items related to Mitchell on display include his ceremonial sword, his musette bag (and a hand-scrawled grocery list found inside it), a model of his DH-4 Osprey aircraft, and photos.
Lt. Alfred M. Gorham Display
Lt. Alfred M. Gorham (1920-2009) was the only Wisconsinite who was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black fighter pilots serving with the famed “Red Tails” 332nd Fighter Group in World War II. Gorham, who was raised in Waukesha, flew 61 combat missions.
“He had some mechanical trouble over southern Germany in February of 1945, crash-landed and was one of 34 Tuskegee Airmen who became German prisoners of war,” Streicher says. “After the war, he was repatriated and came back to Wisconsin.”
When he returned home, he worked at AC Spark Plug in Oak Creek for 40 years. Gorham passed away in 2009 and is interred at Arlington National Cemetery. His family was at the Mitchell Gallery of Flight for the unveiling of the exhibit honoring his service when the museum reopened in 2020.
Space Flashlight
Born in Cleveland, James A. Lovell moved to Milwaukee with his family, graduating from Juneau High School before attending UW-Madison and joining the Navy as a pilot in the 1950s. He was later selected as an astronaut for NASA’s Gemini and Apollo programs. Lovell was one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the moon on Apollo 8 in 1968. He commanded the Apollo 13 mission two years later.
Streicher says Lovell, who recently passed away at age 97 and lived in a suburb of Chicago, was “very supportive” of the Mitchell Gallery of Flight, advising them on details of a model they made of the Apollo 13 mission, and loaning the museum several items, including this flashlight that was on board the Apollo 8 mission, which launched Dec. 21, 1968.
“In one of the movies they took in the spacecraft’s cabin, floating weightless, they flip this flashlight at the camera,” Streicher says. “It was either that flashlight or one like it that was carried on the mission.”
READ MORE ABOUT THE AIRPORT’S 100-YEAR HISTORY HERE.
