Mission Accomplished
We came, we saw and we may go back again. We've been immersed in airplanes for two days and still have not seen all of the the National Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB. The museum is housed in five huge hangars with dramatic lighting and dioramas of the period. There's also an IMAX Theater (you know how I love that ) so we saw a film on fighter training over the Nevada desert and one on the Magic of Flight. I will never look at the Nevada desert in the same way again.
We started our tour in the Cold War Gallery where Jim wanted to see the SR-71 Blackbird. The plane is so stealthy that I could not get a good picture of it. Here's the best I could do.
Out of the 150 pix I took I like the ones of the nose art best. Here's an example.
The planes are loving restored by volunteers. We met a couple of guys inside a C-124 cargo plane where they were painting. They were probably in their 70s....said they just come in on Tuesday morning and ask what they can do! They were telling war stories when we came upon them. Both days there were Air Force groups touring. Sometimes you see an old guy just sitting in a wheel chair staring at a plane. Imagine the experiences and stories in the heads of all those guys.
Each plane has a story, This one is The B-29, Bockscar, that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. We happened to be at this plane when a small group of Japanese tourists came by. I wonder how our thoughts compared..
Here's a section of the Berlin Wall along with a Trabant auto, manufactured in East Germany. Made very cheaply it could not compete with Western cars after the wall came down.
The Presidential Plane display was very interesting to me. We stood in the Air Force One plane that carried President Kennedy back to Washington DC....right where they made space for the casket...gave me chills.
We've been to several Air Museums but this is by far the best overall display. If you tried to read all the display info you could be there a week or more. In fact, since we missed three galleries we may go back tomorrow!