Non hunting trip report

My kids are on Fall Break this week so we drove over to the US Air Force museum in Dayton, OH.

My son is a big history buff and really enjoyed it but my daughter wasn’t nearly as interested.

That place is huge, it’s over 1 million square feet with four interconnected buildings and they have just about everything there related to flight history. Basically if they don’t have it, the only other place you might be able to see it is the National Air and Space museum.

They have it divided into eras ranging from the Wright brothers right up to a B-2 bomber and an F-22, plus the entire range of US nuclear missiles and the space program.

They have the Wright flyer that was the first plane purchased by the US military and some of the fabric from the original Wright flyer from Kitty Hawk.

They have one of just about every plane used by all sides in WW I then go into the inter-war period when the focus was on speed records.

Their WW II collection is huge. The showcase of that collection is the original Memphis Belle and the B-29 Bockscar that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

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In the Korean War section they have the first series of US jet fighters plus a couple of the first Russian Mig jets as well.

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They have an entire section for the Cold War period with B-36 and a B-47 nuclear bombers. If any of you would happen to remember the old Jimmy Stewart movie “Strategic Air Command”, those are the planes featured in that movie.

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Their section for the Viet Nam era has most of the helicopters, fighters, and of course a B-52. They also have the C-141 ‘Hanoi Taxi” which was the plane that flew out the first group of POW’s when they were released.

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They have the missiles in a simulated missile silo.

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They also have a Presidential section where they have the planes used by FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and the Air Force One that transported JFK to and from Dallas, and was used up through Nixon.

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They also have the only XB-70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber in existence as well as the only B-2 that is on display.

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I know the pics aren’t that great, but it’s kinda hard to get a good pic of things that big.

Thumper, they did have a display that might interest you. They have a lot of displays honoring Air Force personnel who were awarded the MOH or Air Force Cross, and one was for a nurse who rescued several of the kids from the plane that crashed during Operation Baby Lift. I know you’ve mentioned having some involvement in the recovery after the crash.

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All in all a good trip and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in aviation history.


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When I was 11, which would have made it about 1965, my parents took me to the SAC Airplane museum at Offut (‘Awful’ in AF lingo) AFB in Omaha. My uncle was the greenskeeper at the AFB golf course there and we were visiting them.
The museum was just an empty tarmac filled up with airplanes ofevery description imagineable just parked, with ladders and steps. Youcould climb up into a B17 and make your way up and sit in the cocikpits. and down into the gun mounts. It was the coolest experience ever for an 11 year old kid to get to see them that way. some of the planes even had the old logbooks in the cockpit that you could thumb through.
I highly doubt that kind of access exists these days or even if there is a museum there any more. Didn’t they even close Offut? Ans speaking of SAC, they didn’t have a B52 parked there because they were still in service then! That prolly makes me old.

BKB

They did let you walk through a few of the planes and all of the Presidential ones, but it was limited access. They had the cargo bays open on several of the cargo planes, but they all basically look alike on the inside.

They did have a few cockpits that a person could get into, but these were static models, not the ones in the actual planes.

A couple of years ago they had a air show at the Air Guard base nearby and they had one of the flyable B-17’s there and you could walk through it.

I have a really neat pic of my son manning one of the waist guns.


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The Confederate, ahem “Commemorative” Aif Force makes a regular stop here each year and they bring an old b24 and you can take a ride in it.
I’ve never been but they always draw abig crowd. I haven’t been to an actual air show since my Air Force days at MacDill. There were some good ones. It was an F4 training base and they always had the F4 version of the Wild Weasel used in Viet Nam. I worked with a lady here in Tulsa whose hubbyflew one in Nam. He told my son and I about screaming in to get the Viet Cong to light up their Russian SAM sites so the follow on planes with ARMs could take them out. Other than maybe a 50, I don’t know that they any armament other than chaff and flares. That had to be something you didn’t want to repeat very many times. Her hubby did two tours doingvthat shit.

BKB

BKB

That’s who had the B-17 that we went through.

They also have what I believe to be one of the two only airworthy B-29’s. They flew one of them in to Kalamazoo, MI this summer but it was a weekend that I had to work so we couldn’t make it. Hopefully one of them come close again, I’d love to go through one of them.

The museum pointed out that the Millennium Falcon cockpit was based on a B-29 cockpit.

They had a few F-4’s at the museum including the Wild Weasel version. Same with the F-105. My son climbed around the static F-4 Wild Weasel cockpit.

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That’s pretty cool DD. It definitely reminds me of the set up at the Air and Space Museum out near Duller Airport here in the DC area.


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I could look at those things for hours and hours. I think they had the Memphis Belle at the Udvar Hazy museum for a bit. They have a space shuttle and SR71. Most dudes just stop and gawk and the SR71. That thing is a freaking beast. Looks more like a rocket than a plane.

They have an Sr-71 in Dayton but only a training mock up of a shuttle.

There is an air museum in Kalamazoo, MI, which is just over an hour from me, that has an SR-71. They have a platform built so you can walk up and look into the cockpit. Pretty cool.

Another really cool air museum is the Naval aviation Museum in Pensacola. They have just about every significant airplane that has anything to do with Naval aviation there plus if you’re there on the right day of the week you can walk out the back door and see the blue angels practice for free.

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My AF unit was a ‘tenant unit’ on MacDill, so they had us way out by the end of the flight line. I saw a SR-71 land and take off and it was a loud motor scooter. Someonesaid they had their own maint crew and it stayed in a hangar the whole time it was there.
I always thought it was one of the coolest birds there was.

BKB

The one that they have in Kalamazoo is one of the trainer variants with a second elevated cockpit for the instructor.

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If you ever get out Hombre's way there is a pretty cool aerospace museum outside of Seattle too.

Don't recall if it was there or elsewhere but at one such place they allowed you to crawl into the separated-from-the-plane cockpit of an SR-71 which was WAY cool to me, my wife, not so much.

Now THAT looks like it would be interesting. There were times I felt a C-141 or C5A was my home away from home. My brother was a Loadmaster on a C-130 during ‘Nam and flew a few supply missions into Saigon. We’d usually find time to hook up whenever he flew over. P-hole, my main base station was about 20 klicks from a big F-4 (C’s, D’s and E’s) base. I was actually on a waiting list to fly the back seat of an F-4 on a training mission, but moved down south about a month before my flight. Sometime while there, we helped track an SR-71, I think for a speed run around the world (or something like that) I don’t remember the details as it was not part of my mission, but I was right next to the bay that was working that mission and listened in on a lot of the banter.

I spent quite a bit of time there at the Air America base (flying into Laos) We had our ARDF planes there as well as the U-2’s. We also trained a lot of Thai, Vietnamese and Laotian pilots there with our T-28’s. I was still working intel when ‘Nam fell, the went down south to help with the refugees coming in from ‘Nam in April ‘75. The “Operation Baby Lift” crash was the first C-5A Galaxy stuffed full of orphans to take off from Saigon during the evacuation. The dead were all brought to Thailand. I was still there for the Mayaguez Incident in May (have pics around here someplace) and my final duty was in August ‘75 when I personally (with an officer and two other NCO’s) burned a truckload of babies from the C-5A crash. One by one, by hand at a Buddhist monastery out in the jungle at 3:00 in the morning. (This was later found to be the impetus to my PTSD although I didn’t realize it until the shrinks figured it out). I was stationed just outside of the largest base in S. E. Asia, mostly B-52’s and KC-135’s. I was out in the Gulf, floating in an old inner tube right at the end of the runway when the last B-52 to fly out of S. E. Asia took off right over my head. That was when we were pulling out after ‘Nam and turning the bases over to the Thai government.

A couple weeks after that, I was headed home on a nice, commercial Pan Am flight with hot stewardesses (the norm in those days), but got pulled from the flight in Guam when we stopped for fuel. Some mucky-muck General took me in his office to inform me I was the only one passing through Guam within the next couple of weeks who had a high enough security clearance (Top Secret Crypto) to do the job. The job? Carry a briefcase to deliver to another mucky-muck in Hawaii (I was originally headed for Oakland, California, then home) I was also given a .45 with orders to shoot anyone who approached me and refused to back away before the briefcase was delivered. (True story and I almost had to do it! Long story.) The plane? A C-141 and I was the only passenger except for some military equipment and caskets for stateside burial. So much for my nice commercial flight. To this day, I have no clue whatsoever what was in that damned briefcase.