Ropkey Armor Museum (today, known as the Ropkey Armor and Aviation Museum) is a military history museum in

Indianapolis, Indiana Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Mari ...

History

The museum is privately owned by the Ropkey family. It stemmed from the founder Fred Ropkey's interest in military history and his past career as a tank platoon leader in the U.S. Marine Corps during the early 1950s. The Ropkey Armor Museum closed July 29, 2017. Afterwards, The vehicle collection was downsized. Some pieces of the collection were distributed to other museums while the core collection was relocated by the Ropkey's to Indianapolis, Indiana. The museum lives on today as the Ropkey Armor and Aviation Museum with renewed focus given to historic aircraft and aviation history.

Collection

The museum collection consists of AFVs, soft skin vehicles, marine and aircraft. X14

Other exhibits are soft-skin military vehicles, aircraft and a

Vietnam war The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

-era

PBR PBR may refer to: Science and technology * Passive bistatic radar * Partition boot record * Pebble bed reactor, a type of nuclear reactor * Peripheral benzodiazepine receptor, another name for translocator protein * Phosphorus bromide * Photobio ...

. The aircraft include an

Antonov An-2 The Antonov An-2 ("kukuruznik"—corn crop duster; USAF/DoD reporting name Type 22, NATO reporting name Colt) is a Soviet mass-produced single-engine biplane utility/agricultural aircraft designed and manufactured by the Antonov Design Bure ...

and the unique Bell X-14B. This aircraft was used for early research into

VTOL A vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft is one that can take off and land vertically without relying on a runway. This classification can include a variety of types of aircraft including helicopters as well as thrust-vectoring fixed-win ...

until it was written off in a landing accident in 1981. It is currently being restored by the museum.

References

Military and war museums in Indiana Transportation museums in Indiana Museums in Marion County, Indiana Tank museums {{Indiana-museum-stub