Swedish Air Force Museum

Free world-class military aviation museum with over 60 aircraft, including the SAAB Draken and Viggen

The Flygvapenmuseum — Swedish Air Force Museum — is one of the finest aviation museums in Europe and entirely free to enter, which makes it an extraordinary value. The collection covers Swedish military aviation from World War One biplanes through to the SAAB JAS 39 Gripen currently in Swedish service, with over sixty aircraft on display in a series of well-designed hangars and an outdoor flight line.

The highlight for most visitors is the collection of SAAB jets — the distinctive double-delta Draken, the variable-geometry Viggen in its several variants, and various prototypes and test aircraft from the decades when Sweden maintained a completely independent fighter aircraft industry. The museum also does justice to the earlier periods: the Gloster Gladiator biplanes Sweden used in the winter of 1940, and the unusual mix of Swedish, German, and British designs that served the Swedish Air Force through World War Two. Allow at least three hours; aviation enthusiasts will need a full day.

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Linköping is where SAAB has designed and built its fighter jets since the 1930s, which gives the Air Force Museum a local significance that most aviation museums lack. The SAAB Draken — the double-delta jet that Sweden operated from 1960 to 2005 — was designed twenty kilometres from where it now sits on display. The museum also holds the world's only surviving Caproni Ca.1, an Italian bomber from 1914 that somehow ended up in Swedish service.

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