NEW ORLEANS
The National WWII Museum has celebrated the next milestone in its $325 million expansion with a Grand Opening ceremony for the new US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center, which opened to the public on Monday.
The $35 million glass and steel exhibit space holds a tribute to WWII Medal of Honor recipients and displays huge macro artifacts including a B-17E Flying Fortress – the massive bomber was part of America's "Arsenal of Democracy" that won the war. It now joins one of the world's most substantial collections of WWII artifacts.
Other artifacts inside the US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center include the "big guns" of American military might, consisting of restored aircraft such as a B-25J Mitchell, SBD-3 Dauntless, TBM Avenger, P-51D Mustang, Corsair F4U-4 and an interactive submarine experience based on the final mission of the USS Tang. Visitors will man authentic positions and perform the battle actions of actual crewmembers as the Tang engages the Japanese forces in a recreation of the doomed sub's final war patrol battle.
The Museum opened the new pavilion even as another, the $33 million Campaigns of Courage: European & Pacific Theaters, rises nearby, slated to open in 2014. The last major building, The Liberation Pavilion (scheduled to debut in 2016), will focus on the war's closing months and the immediate post-war years and contain an expansive special exhibits gallery. A proposed hotel and conference center as well as a parking structure, if built, will finish out the expansion.
