Naval Aviation Museum in Wildwood is Lesser Known Gem

by KYW's John Ostapkovich

If you like airplanes and history, there's a good match a stone's throw from Wildwood.  It's been there a long time but is off the beaten path.

The Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum is at Hangar One of the Cape May County Airport. 

Various jet, propeller, fixed-wing and rotor aircraft are on display, but Rutgers Camden history professor Jeffrey Dorwart, who wrote a pamphlet on the history of the place, says many people don't recognize how critical it was in training World War Two carrier pilots, or the toll that took:

"We had about 40 pilots within a nine month period that crashed their SBD's, their Dauntless, their Corsairs and so forth into Cape May County, into the Delaware Shore and the Delaware Bay and died."

Fun fact, the original name was NAS Rio Grande, after another nearby town, but the mail kept getting sent to Texas.