The Museum of Aviation, originally the
Southeastern Museum of Aviation, was founded in 1980, after
World War I aviator Guy Orlando Stone offered his collection of aviation memorabilia to
Robins Air Force Base under the condition that the base could build a museum to house it. By 1988, the museum's name had changed to the
Museum of Aviation at Robins. In 1989,
Georgia governor Joe Frank Harris signed legislation to create the
Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame, to be housed at the museum. Among the original inductees included Stone, whose collections had helped launch the museum. In the 1990s, museum facilities expanded with addition of the "Hangar One" exhibit space in a former
aircraft hangar. Some of these were relocated to other museums, while others were scrapped on-site. In 2019, the museum unveiled a statue of
Eugene Bullard, the first
African-American pilot to fly in combat. Bullard, a native of
Columbus, Georgia, served in the "
Aéronautique Militaire", or French Air Force during
World War I. He was posthumously commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force in 1994. A team disassembled a C-47 at the
Museum of Alaska Transportation & Industry in preparation to move it to the museum in June 2024. ==Aircraft on display==