Texas Air Museum receives donation of a MiG from Borger

By Melissa McCaghren

Slatonite GM

The Texas Air Museum has many historic acquisitions, including a Gemini egress trainer, a rare Japanese cannon and other items.

Now, a piece of Russian history is added to the mix, as the museum received a MiG aircraft Tuesday evening (July 21) at the museum.

The plane’s original location was unusual however – it was in Borger.

Tyler Welty, a volunteer at the Air Museum, was the one who found the plane on his way to getting his pilot’s license.

“As a student pilot you have to do a really long flight, and for my long flight I decided to see Palo Duro (Canyon),” he said. “But I didn’t want to land at Amarillo, so I flew up to Borger.

“When I landed there I got out of the plane and started fueling up, I saw that there were some weird kind of objects that at one end of the airport,” Welty added. “I started asking the guy at the tank truck about it and he said, ‘Oh, those are like old Soviet MiGs, do you want to see them’?”

Welty of course said he did.

For more information, please read the Thursday edition of The Slatonite.