Bellanca Airfield Museum & Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame

Address 2 Centerpoint Boulevard, New Castle, DE 19720

Phone: (302) 999-8623

Website: https://www.bellancamuseum.org/

Bellanca Airfield Museum — Where Delaware Aviation History Took Flight

The Story of a Record-Breaking Aircraft Designer, a Historic Hangar, and the Plane Charles Lindbergh Wanted

Hidden in plain sight off Route 273 near the Delaware River, the Bellanca Airfield Museum preserves one of the most remarkable and least-told chapters in American aviation history. The museum occupies the surviving Air Service Hangar of the former Bellanca Airfield — a once state-of-the-art facility that produced approximately 3,000 aircraft over nearly three decades and set world records with virtually every model it built.

The Bellanca Airfield Museum is open exclusively on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month, April through October only, from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The museum is closed Sunday through Friday, closed on all other Saturdays, and closed entirely from November through March. Plan your visit carefully — a wrong-day trip means a locked gate. Admission is $5 per adult (18+). Children 17 and under are admitted free of charge. The museum is fully handicap accessible. Parking is available in the paved lot directly outside the museum entrance.

Giuseppe Mario Bellanca: The Immigrant Engineer Who Changed Aviation

Giuseppe Mario Bellanca was born in Sicily in 1886 and immigrated to the United States in 1911 with an obsession: building better airplanes. He had already been designing and flying experimental aircraft in Italy, and he arrived in America at precisely the moment the aviation industry was finding its footing.

Bellanca’s genius was efficiency. While other aircraft designers focused on raw power, Bellanca obsessed over the relationship between lift, drag, and fuel economy — producing aircraft that could carry more payload over greater distances on less fuel than anything else flying. His designs were so far ahead of their contemporaries that his planes dominated endurance and efficiency records throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

Among his notable connections and achievements:

• Bellanca was a student and protégé of Fiorello La Guardia, the future mayor of New York City and namesake of LaGuardia International Airport
• His aircraft, the WB-2 Columbia, was Charles Lindbergh’s first choice for the 1927 transatlantic flight. Lindbergh was unable to purchase the plane due to a dispute over who would pilot the crossing. Two weeks after Lindbergh completed his famous flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, the Columbia — with pilot Clarence Chamberlin at the controls — flew nonstop from New York to Berlin, 3,911 miles, setting a new distance record
• In 1931, Bellanca’s Miss Veedol became the first aircraft to fly nonstop across the Pacific, traveling from Japan to Washington State — a distance of 4,500 miles
• Bellanca’s final aircraft design took flight in 1973 — decades after his initial work — and still holds four world speed records

In 1928, Bellanca partnered with Henry B. du Pont to establish an airfield, aircraft plant, and service hangar in New Castle, Delaware. The facility became Delaware’s first full-service public aviation center and operated from 1928 through the mid-1950s, employing more than 3,000 workers at its peak. The Bellanca Aircraft Corporation built hundreds of planes at this New Castle site, with virtually every model setting at least one world record.

The Hangar: A Rescue Story

By the early 2000s, the entire former Bellanca Airfield complex had been swallowed by a large business park — warehouse distribution centers, roadways, and commercial development obliterating a site that once shaped American aviation history. The only surviving original structure was the 1936-built Air Service Hangar.

When the hangar’s owners announced plans to demolish it, a group of history and aviation enthusiasts formed Friends of Bellanca Airfield, Inc. (FOBA) in March 2003 to save it. Seven months later, during a 75th-anniversary celebration of the former airport, the State of Delaware announced a matching grant for the building’s restoration. A subsequent grant from the Save America’s Treasures program followed in 2005, and the hangar was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, the hangar — a 7,800-square-foot structure with an adjacent 1,600-square-foot office space — houses the museum, the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame, and a media center available for aviation research.

What’s Inside the Bellanca Airfield Museum

Aircraft on Display

The museum’s aircraft collection includes:

• The Bellanca Cruisair — the official State of Delaware Historic Airplane
• The Bellanca Skyrocket II — the last aircraft Bellanca ever designed, donated by the Delaware Aviation Museum in 2020
• A replica of the record-setting Columbia aircraft

Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame

Established in December 1999 on the 96th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight, the Delaware Aviation Hall of Fame commemorates the First State’s most significant aviation contributors — from pioneering designers and test pilots to military aviators, WASP members (Women Airforce Service Pilots), and the Delaware scientists who contributed to America’s space program. New inductees are honored each year.

Media Center and Library

The museum’s media library allows visitors to research aviation history in America through books, DVDs, VHS recordings, archival materials, and a flight simulator — a resource that goes well beyond typical small museum offerings.

Model Train Layout

The museum also features a model train display — a quirky bonus that has become a genuine draw for families, particularly for the younger visitors who may not have arrived with aviation on their minds.

Bellanca Airfield Museum in Context

The museum sits approximately one mile west of the New Castle Court House Museum along Route 273 — making it an easy pairing with a walking tour of Historic New Castle. It’s also within a few miles of the New Castle Farmers Market, one of the region’s most popular weekend destinations.

For aviation history enthusiasts, the Bellanca Museum pairs naturally with the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base — Delaware’s large-scale military aviation facility — for a comprehensive portrait of the state’s extraordinary contributions to American flight.