An Air Museum Well Worth The Trip

If it ever flew as a military bird.....the odds are pretty good you'll find one at the Air Force Museum, just outside the gate of Wright --Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

I'd stopped to visit our daughter and son-in-law on my car trip east to D.C. a couple of years ago, and took a little time to wander around in a museum I hadn't seen in about 20 years, which is always being added-to as more aircraft become available.

I didn't have enough time or film to shoot EERYTHING that's IN that place, so I just photographed the ones that intrigued me the most.

It's INCREDIBLE what all is IN there.

We all remember the "Enola gay", the B-29 that dropped the first Atomic Bomb on Japan (Hiroshima).  The Smithsonian has the Enola Gay hangared somewhere on the outskirts of Washington D.C.

What you're seeing HERE is the Boeing B-29, "Bock's Car", which dropped the SECOND A-Bomb on Nagasaki.

An exact reproduction of the bomb (INERT of course!)

A Soviet MIG-15............and its Korean War rival, a North American F-86.

A BIG chunk of cargo plane, the Douglas C-124 Loadmaster ("Old Shakey"),,,,,,,,,,,and then,,,,,,,over in the "fast lane", our first supersonic bomber, a Convair B-58 Hustler."

Not everything in that museum flew...........here is a fairly "primative" radar screen from the 40's..........and an actual section of the Berlin Wall------that "Mr Gorbechev tore down."

I love World War II stuff, like this Boeing B-17 and that Curtiss P-40.

You do NOT see Consolidated B-24 Liberators anymore.  You just DON'T!..........but you can see THIS one at Wright --Patterson

The Japanese Zero, which surprised a LOT of people at Pearl Harbor, and an "OKA"----a rocket-powered suicide plane designed to hold off the Americans at the end.

NAZI technology is visible in the museum as well.......from the world's first operational jet fighter, the ME-262 (PLUS the cutaway of an actual engine).....to the rocket-powered ME-163 Komet.

The V-1 "flying bomb" was essentially the world's first "cruise missile", and the dreaded V-2, the first "intercontinental ballistic missile."

(note*  Hitler's impatience to dominate the world, did not allow enough of the above 4 weapons to MAKE it out there in enough numbers to "turn the tide."-----fortunately for US!    Had he waited another couple of years as his generals & admirals WANTED him to, they'd have had a STOCKPILE of this stuff, and the world might be a very different place today.  Spooky thought.*)

3 or 4 huge hangars make up the museum, and as we walked around some more, we stumbled upon a Soviet legend, the MIG-21..........my son-in-law Keith is an airplane buff and I took his picture next to an extremely fast American interceptor, the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter.

Here's a pair of "Century series" interceptors from Convair, that are right up LAMONT'S alley-----------the F-102 Delta Dagger and an F-106 Delta Dart.

And THIS one spells "BOOGIE" from whatever angle you look at it, the Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird."

The Boeing B-47 Stratojet was the "fore-runner" of it's larger cousin-to-be, the B-52.   At right: my daughter Donna (not to be confused with WIFE Donna) and I, .........in front of a McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom, an airplane I've always considered to be the best all-around jet fighter EVER!

On my way HOME from the east coast on that same trip, I also stopped at the SAC (Strategic Air Command), just a few miles west of Omaha, Nebraska.  I'll show ya some of THOSE in my next blog.