Travis AFB museum annex at Crissey Field proposed

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Printed on: Sun, Dec 10, 2006

Travis museum annex at Crissey Field proposed
By Ian Thompson

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE - Visitors to San Francisco could soon get a taste of the Travis Air Museum if plans to create a museum annex at Crissey Field next to the San Francisco Bay become reality.

'It is exciting,' said James Taylor, a member of the museum foundation. 'It is a spectacular setting. Where can you find a better place with the Golden Gate on one side, Alcatraz and the Palace of Fine Arts nearby.'

The annex is not an Air Force or Jimmy Doolittle Air and Space Museum project, but something initiated by the Jimmy Doolittle Air and Space Museum Foundation that supports the museum, museum curator Gary Leiser said.

'They are investigating the possibility of establishing an annex in one of the pre-World War II hangars at Crissey Field in San Francisco,' Leiser said. 'The idea being that this would be an off-site location to tell the Doolittle story at a historic airfield.'

Crissey Field, located nest to San Francisco Bay just east of the Golden Gate Bridge, was home to the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition before becoming a military airfield in 1921 that closed in 1936.

The foundation is interested in setting up shop in an aircraft hangar"