Just a short summary for now; I will try to add some pictures (and maybe some extra details) tomorrow.
The biggest tourist attraction, a couple of minutes away from me, is the (Dutch) Nationaal Militair Museum (translated: National Militairy Museum), located on the former military Soesterberg Air Base. (Later more on that last part.)
It was created when 2 different museums, the “Leger Museum” from Delft and the “Militair Luchtvaart Museum” from Soesterberg merged together in the newly build museum in around 2011/2012 (I believe?!?).
As a young boy growing up next the ‘Military Aviation Museum’ (which could be visited free of charge!) I feel that aviation part didn’t get enough attention (based on the huge collection they had), compared to the Army part, in the new Museum. (But having grown up next to a Military Airbase, I might be a bit biased though!
Back to the fact that the current location of the Museum is on the former Soesterberg Airbase; one of the older military aviation sites in the Netherlands, dating back to 1913!
Besides all the roles it served for the Dutch Royal Airforce, and for a couple of years as a German Fliegerhorst under WW2 occupation, it has also hosted an American fighter squadron for 40 years during the cold war. Without going into much detail, the squadron, is most widely known now as the 32nd TFS, "(The) Wolfhounds. The original Wolfhounds logo is stated to date back to WWII, (before it’s Soesterberg Period) and is allegedly designed by Walt Disney Studios.
‘The Wolfhounds’ landed in 1954 with F-86 Sabre and afterwards flew the F-100 Super Sabre, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-4 Phantom and the F-15 Eagle.
In 1994, after 40 years of pressence in Soesterberg, the last F-15’s departed, marking the end of a (unique) era that has helped to shape the small villages around the base (like Soesterberg for example).
After another (roughly) 14 years of use by the Royal Dutch Airforce, the Airbase was finally closed in 2008, due to new budget cuts, just 5 years shy of it’s 100 year aniversary, marking the end of (one of) the oldest Military Airbases in the Netherlands.
Nowadays large parts of the former base are open (you can walk a large stretch of the former 3000m runway, see some part of the infrastructure (like a number of reinforced aircraft shelters) and other remains of the airbase, although large parts have been demolished over time.
I will try to ad some pictures in one of the following days and try to make the whole story a bit more coherent. Just a bit to tired to do that now! 