The Imperial War Museum Duxford, Cambridgeshire, has revealed details of £15m worth of investment to improve its visitor facilities, as it prepares for the 2018 centenary of the airfield it occupies.

The museum - home to aircraft, tanks, military vehicles and boats - attracts around 400,000 visitors annually and features the Battle of Britain exhibition, the American Air Museum, and AirSpace, which tells the history of aviation in Britain and the Commonwealth.

Plans for the museum include a £2.5m revamp of the American Air Museum in 2015-16, a new hangar where visitors can see aircraft conservation in action, the transformation of the unused officers' mess into offices and a £650,000 scheme to resurface the airfield's runway that hosts the museum's air shows.

The museum says many of the plans are long term and details are still being determined, however, a new permanent exhibition Historic Duxford will open to the public on 28 March, detailing the story of RAF Duxford as an operational fighter base from 1918 to 1961.

A feasibility study has been carried out to identify a possible site for a hotel, which the museum says due to its popularity as a conference venue and visitor attraction would add significantly to the visitor offer.