NOTE: If you are interested in the X-14 and want to know more about it, check out issue Volume 2 Number 2 of Aerospace Projects Review. Many more of these photos are published there!
While travelling across western Indiana on I-74, I saw a few signs for the “Ropkey Armor Museum.” I figured it might be a nice little diversion, so I took the exit. As I kept driving along the farm roads, I started to lose heart… it began to seem more and more like it’d be a dinky little farm with a delapidated tank or two. When I finally got to the museum, it was in fact a privately owned farm. There were a few pieces of artillery scattered around a sizable prefab steel building. You have to drive past the house to get to the museum proper. Once inside the museum, though, all thoughts of this being a “farm with a delapidated tank or two” faded. I was flabbergasted… the collection is several dozen armored vehicles from all eras in a remarkable state of preservation.
While the collection of armored vehicle was quite impressive, there was one item on display in the back that had my jaw on the floor: the Bell X-14B VTOL research vehicle. A grand total of one X-14 was built, and it ended it’s career with a hard landing. I figured that it was either at some NASA facility, or turned into cat food cans. As it turns out, the second option was close to the truth… around ten years ago a museum staffer saw the X-14 on a list of government items to be sold as scrap metal, and they bought it sight unseen.
The Bell X-14 has clearly seen better days; but not only has it been saved from shredding and melting down into beer cans, it has been moved out of the weather. I was told that there has been interest expressed in transferring it to another museum, where it would be fully restored. All in all, I have to say a big “Thank You” to the Ropkey Armor Museum for saving an important piece of aerospace history.
In you find yourself in the area, drop in. It’s an impressive collection, and well worth the trip.
Plus, they have the one thing that every museum of real quality has to have…
Travelling across country is expensive. You can support the cause by Buying My Stuff. Or just plain Give Me Money.
