Red Baron would be right at home in this hangar; so would Howard Hughes.

“Here it all is,” said Jack Wilson, director of the Western Museum of Flight at Prairie Avenue and 120th Street. And a sweeping view of the lofty, curved-roof hangar proves how much of aviation’s past can be gotten into 10,000 square feet.

Airplanes, most of them military, are arranged in rows. Some look ready to fly, while others are in various stages of restoration because at the museum, putting planes back together is almost as important as showing them off.

Aircraft models, some of them used to simulate the real thing in movies, hang from the ceiling. A model of Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose is very visible. So are models of World War I German Fokkers of Red Baron fame. The three-winged planes once decorated a hotel bar near Los Angeles International Airport.

Glass cases are crammed with small models and postal envelopes commemorating aviation history, as well as flight medals, cloth insignias and pilots’ uniforms. Shelves bulge with books and periodicals; reels of film produced by manufacturers and the government show the history of flight beginning with World War I fighters.

The museum is tended with care and pride by a volunteer group of aviation buffs, many retired and some still active in South Bay aerospace companies. Their contacts have resulted in many donations and loans of memorabilia.

“We do this for the love of airplanes,” said Wilson, who was a tail gunner on a bomber during World War II and spent 38 years with the Northrop Corp. “It’s some place to be other than the beer joints.”

Rarities are found in the Hawthorne museum.

There is the only 1937 British Hornet Moth in the United States. The 25-foot biplane with retractable wings has been restored to mint condition.

The museum also has the only surviving version of a stubby experimental fighter interceptor with a rear propeller that Northrop developed in 1944. “They made two,” Wilson explained, “and the first one cracked up at once.”

Another rarity is a small World War II glider, with a one-ton bomb on each side, that was the prototype for a buzz bomb. Only 13 were made.

A two-person Vietnam-era spy plane is another highlight of the museum, but it will be a while before it takes shape. The plane is in several well-worn pieces, the cabin a mass of exposed wires. Wilson said the plane could fly 100 feet above ground without being heard. It was donated by the Air Force, complete with manuals and blueprints.

The most popular display with children is the Green Hornet, a homemade “gyrocopter” copied from a photograph. A lawn mower gear moves the rotor on the craft and the seat is made from a household chair.

“Kids like it because we let them sit in it,” Wilson said.

One portion of the museum is given over to the long-term reconstruction of a Tiger Moth, a biplane built in Canada as a training plane during World War II. After many years in a garage, the plane was “a basket case” when it got to the museum, said Bill Bruschaber, another retired Northrop employee and one of three men who regularly work on the plane.

While the fuselage frame and other metal parts are being salvaged, all wood pieces--including long wing spars--are being replaced. “The best thing about doing all this work,” Bruschaber said, “is that I’ll be able to fly it when it’s done.”

Northrop, whose original 1939 plant is just across the airport runway from the museum, has been intimately involved with the project from the start, and Northrop employees are major financial supporters of the museum. Although the museum is free, donations are accepted--and a wartime bomb has been made into a collection box.

The museum grew out of the restoration of a 1943 Northrop seaplane that was submerged in the ocean for decades after crashing in Iceland. It was brought back to Hawthorne, where 40 volunteers worked to put it back together. Out of this, the Southern California Historical Aviation Foundation was formed and went on to open the museum in 1985.

According to Wilson, the most frequently asked questions from people calling for information relate to Northrop’s famed Flying Wing. It was developed as a bomber but was discontinued--and all 15 planes destroyed--in the late 1940s. Some say it was a victim of politics involving competing aircraft manufacturers, but Ira E. Chart, museum curator and Northrop historian, said the plane was eclipsed by newer technology.

About 7,000 people, ranging from school children to aviation researchers to commercial airline pilots, have gone through the museum and sat at the big conference table reading its books.

One visitor, Bill James from Seattle, said he read about the museum in an aircraft magazine. “It said don’t miss it, and here I am.”