B-17 Alliance Museum & Restoration Hangar

You walk through Gate W-10 and stumble into a working hangar where history is loud and oily. This is not a museum of glass cases; it’s a shop floor of lived memory. The Lacey Lady, a B-17G, sits mid-restoration beneath the rafters while volunteers — veterans and lifelong tinkerers — graduate stories into your ear between rivet pulls and riveted skin. Tours often run 30–45 minutes and a docent will point out a Secret Code Map, archive letters, and a Women in Aviation display with equal reverence. Locals treat the place as an intergenerational clubhouse; road-trippers and aviation pilgrims arrive wide-eyed. The community leans on it as an education engine and fundraiser, staging fly-ins and living-history events that fill the hangar with engines and conversation. It feels intimate, hands-on, and proudly unfinished — the best kind of history, messy and human. Bring curiosity, a camera, and a willingness to linger by the restoration bench.