During World War II, the US Army trained thousands of pilots to fly engineless combat gliders into battle — on D-Day, in Operation Market Garden, in Burma and across the Rhine. Many of them trained at South Plains Army Air Field in Lubbock, and the Silent Wings Museum tells their story.
The museum occupies the former terminal of Lubbock’s old municipal airport, north of the city. Its centrepiece is a fully restored Waco CG-4A glider, the plywood-and-fabric aircraft that carried troops and jeeps behind enemy lines.
Top things to do: Silent Wings Museum
The CG-4A glider
Walk around the restored glider and see just how fragile it was. Exhibits explain the towing, the landings and the extraordinary risks the glider pilots took.
Battle galleries
Displays follow the glider missions from Sicily and Normandy to Holland and Germany, with personal stories, uniforms and equipment.
Lubbock in wartime
Learn how the South Plains Army Air Field and other training bases transformed Lubbock during the war.
How to get there
- Address: 6202 North Interstate 27, Lubbock — about 15 minutes north of downtown and close to the airport.
- By car: free parking on site; handy on the way to or from a flight.
Insider tips
- A modest admission fee applies; the museum has typically been open Tuesday–Saturday with Sunday afternoon hours — check first.
- Allow about 1–1.5 hours.
- Aviation fans passing through Dallas can pair this with the history tours in Dallas.
Pair it with a tour
GetYourGuide has no bookable tours in Lubbock itself yet, so these are the best-rated experiences that fit naturally into a trip that includes Silent Wings Museum:
History tour from $72 Dallas: JFK Assassination and Sixth Floor Museum Tour
One of the most popular history tours in Dallas, with more than 500 reviews. A guide walks you through the events of November 1963 at Dealey Plaza and the Sixth Floor Museum, then takes you to other sites connected with the assassination — an absorbing half day if you overnight in Dallas on the way to or from Lubbock.
- Dealey Plaza and the grassy knoll
- The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
- Other key sites of 22 November 1963
Guided tour from $48 Roswell: Guided UFO Incident Tour
Roswell is roughly three hours west of Lubbock across the Llano Estacado — an easy, classic road trip. This two-hour guided tour walks you through what happened in the summer of 1947, the places tied to the story and the theories that followed, so you get far more out of the town than a quick photo with an alien statue.
- The timeline of the famous 1947 “flying saucer” story
- Sites connected to the incident around Roswell
- What ufologists and sceptics have argued since
