Sunday, August 7, 2011

Museum Visit

We hopped on the bike and drove north on the back roads of Ohio to visit the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force.  It's located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base not far from Dayton. As the worlds largest and oldest aviation museum in the world, it was fantastic.  It consists of three huge hangers with displays ranging from early flight to modern war planes.  Throw in planes, helicopters and missiles from every war, then top it off with a building containing spacecraft and huge ballistic missiles and you can see why you could spend many days there.

We also signed up for the tour that took us onto Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to buildings that house past Air Force One planes as well as prototypes and test planes. We walked through planes used by FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.  In the Kennedy plane, you could see where they sawed through a section in the rear of the plane to allow space for his casket.  Fascinating.

We will definitely go back when we return to the area.

From early flight...

To huge experimental aircraft.

A surveillance balloon which held two soldiers.

The "Reaper".  A predator drone used to take out highly mobile targets.

Not a reflection of what I think of Val.

A beautiful mosaic containing 163,000 tiles.  Each tile has a picture with something to do with the Wright brothers.


Various ICBM's.

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