Freeman Municipal Airport on Seymour’s far southwest side was a busier place than normal Saturday with more than 100 departures and landings.
The reason? Freeman Army Airfield Museum’s annual Airplane Ride Day.
The event is designed to help pay for the cost of operating the museum that showcases the field’s origins as a training center for twin-engine bomber pilots from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. Those pilots would train in Beechcraft AT-10 Wichita trainers at the base but then graduate to B-17 Flying Fortresses and the B-24 Liberators during the war.
Twelve pilots, each with at least 500 hours of flight time as required by the FAA, were on hand Saturday to give flights in one of seven planes. The cost was $20 per person for the flights of about 15 minutes each.
Cliff Robinson of Madison also gave aerobatic rides in a 500-horsepower Steamin Stearman biplane. A ride with him included loops and barrel rolls.
Karen James, the museum board’s vice president, said the event also serves as a way for the public to get familiarized with aviation.
“We want to promote aviation and get more people involved in flying and the different fields that aviation offers,” she said.
Julie Abel of Seymour with her son, Waylon Mitchell, in tow went on a flight with husband and wife Gerald and Beverly Brooks, also of Seymour. None of the four had ever flown before.
Mitchell said he was excited to fly and thought it was “so cool” when he was in the air.
“The cars were like toys,” he said.
If he could fly anywhere in the world, Mitchell said he would want to fly over the tallest building in the world. That would currently be the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Its total height is 2,722 feet.
Abel said she mainly went to take her son but loved the flight herself and would do it again.
Beverly Brooks said she rode in the front of the airplane and would have liked to fly longer before landing.
“A couple of hours would’ve been great,” she said.
Another group that went on a flight was Ashley Mellencamp and Justin Bohall, both of Seymour, with her daughter, Delylah Guinn.
Mellencamp said she and her daughter were nervous for the ride because they also had never flown before.
Bohall said he was excited because he had flown before but not in an airplane as small as the ones used for the event.
The airplanes flown Saturday could accommodate three passengers at a time with the weight limit of one passenger at around 250 pounds. Combined, three passengers couldn’t exceed approximately 450 pounds.
Those waiting for their flight were encouraged to visit the museum, which is split between a main building and an annex.
Dan Kiel, a member of the museum’s board, said a future project for the museum is an expanded exhibit about Captain Richard S. Freeman for whom the base was named.
Born in 1907 in Winamac in northern Indiana, Freeman graduated from West Point in 1930. He was a pioneer of the Army Air Mail Service and posthumously was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. He died in 1941 in a B-17 plane near Lovelock, Nevada, before the United States was involved in World War II.
When Freeman’s uncle was relocating from Louisville to Florida, he donated many of his artifacts to the museum. They list includes Freeman’s West Point cadet uniform, gun and sword.
Besides funding day-to-day operations at the museum, the fundraiser also will help pay for future projects.
As for recent changes to the museum, Kiel said changes go on all of the time, and the back room of the museum has been reorganized with new items, such as antique rifles.
Kiel also was impressed by the turnout Saturday and glad more people were visiting the airfield.
“A guy said, ‘I only live a mile from here and I’ve never been here,'” he said.
At the annex, visitors also could participate in a flight simulator ran by Xander Good. He built the simulation as an Eagle Scout project in 2018.
It featured three monitors and a yoke, pedals and switches for controls. A variety of aircraft can be chosen to be flown during the simulations and could be flown anywhere in the state.
After the war, Freeman Field was used to evaluate captured German and Italian aircraft, and at least parts of those aircraft are buried there. Some of those buried airplane parts have been recovered from digs throughout the years and are on display in the annex.
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The Freeman Army Airfield Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. It is located at 1035 A Ave. in Seymour. Admission is free.
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