Photo By John Hamilton | Fort Novosel opened the William A. Howell Training Support Facility, to the public on...... read more read more
Fort Novosel, Ala. – Fort Novosel opened the William A. Howell Training Support Facility (TSF), to the public on April 12, showcasing its impressive collection of one-of-a-kind aircraft. This quarterly event was part of the Aviation Branch birthday celebrations and the Spring Fest event.
Though US military aviation began during the Civil War, the Aviation Branch wasn't officially established until 1983. This led to Fort Novosel’s current primary mission: training Army aviation professionals – from air traffic controllers and flight medics to pilots of today’s advanced combat aircraft.
A key part of this training mission is teaching the history of the Aviation Branch, ensuring future Soldiers learn from both past successes and failures. The TSF serves this purpose, functioning much like a training-focused museum for Aviation Soldiers.
“This building… was purposely built for training, so we don’t open it to the public every day, but we try to do it once a quarter so the public can see what we have here,” said Army Aviation Museum Director Bob Mitchell.
While all military museums aim to educate Soldiers, most Army museums also serve the public by sharing Army history. In contrast, the TSF prioritizes training, opening to the public only once per quarter, and dedicating the remainder of its time to supporting Soldiers in training.
“What we’re looking to do is show young aviators when they arrive that they are joining a line, and that previous line of aviators was clever, innovative, brave, and all the things they have done to succeed,” said Billy Croslow, Army Aviation Branch Historian.
Another thing that makes the TSF unique is what it has on display. Many of the aircraft on display are one-of-a-kind prototypes.
“So essentially what we have in here is a lot of experimental aircraft that we normally wouldn’t put in the museum because they are experimental,” Mitchell said. “When grandpa brings the kids to show them the helicopter he flew, we need to have that aircraft in the museum. Over here we can exhibit all the experimental one-off ideas the Army had that really don’t have a tangent to operational history in the Army, but did serve a purpose being part of evolution and development of machines that would make it into the inventory.”
Over the years the Army has acquired a number of aircraft through various acquisition and modernization programs. Some of these aircraft are modified versions of what the Army has in the inventory, some are totally new designs that never made it beyond the testing phase or were beaten in a competition with another vendor. Instead of sending these aircraft to the scrapyard, the Army has preserved them, and put them on display in the TSF to illustrate to current Soldiers how Army technology got to where it is.
“We look at the lessons that were learned acquiring them and developing them. We ask ourselves ‘did the Army of that era ask the right questions to procure the right device?’ and if they did, how did they develop the questions, because that might be useful to us today,” Croslow said.
Several examples of this are the AH-56 Cheyenne, a high performance attack helicopter prototype, the YUH-61 utility helicopter prototype defeated in competition with what would become the UH-60 Blackhawk, the RAH-66 Comanche, a stealthy helicopter that came from Cold War battlefield concerns, and the S-97 Raider scout and reconnaissance helicopter from the recently cancelled Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program.
Though they didn’t make it into the inventory, these aircraft, like many of the others in the TSF represent important leaps forward in military aviation. By putting these on display and teaching the modern Aviation Soldier about them, the Army can set the conditions for the future, allowing the next generation of Army leaders to make informed decisions on how to build and maintain the lethal force, pull from lessons learned and apply them to new problems, and not retread old ideas that didn’t work out.
“Right now the Army, and [the Aviation Branch] in particular is at a crossroads. We are looking at aspects from the past, to see if we can develop some understanding of how we might fight a war of the future,” Croslow said. “That future aspect requires a lot of guessing, as we try and balance the manned and unmanned requirements, as we look towards what we’re developing in the future, we can use these history lessons to at least help shape the questions so that we can, in an informed fashion, build the right stuff.”
While the TSF won’t be open again until Saturday, July 19, the Aviation Museum is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Get more information on their website: https://www.armyaviationmuseum.org/
To see the TSF Open House schedule for the rest of 2025, click here: https://app.cheqrboard.com/explore/83043d58-81c7-47f0-aedf-5449d61283cd
| Date Taken: | 04.12.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 04.23.2025 16:58 |
| Story ID: | 495876 |
| Location: | FORT NOVOSEL, ALABAMA, US |
| Web Views: | 72 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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