Took scads of pictures. Brought the little Sony P&S but forgot to charge it and the batt'ry crapper out before we reached Kokomo. Used the camera in the cellie for the rest of the trip.
Here's a preview:
 |
| Y'know, that's a big frickin' plane when you get right up on it like that... |
 |
| PLANES! |
If you ever get over here to Dayton, I recommend the USAF Museum, if you haven't been. Lots of good stuff on display.
ReplyDeleteDouble thumbs up on the Dayton Air Museum, well worth crossing the border to buckeye country (I still blame them for Barry's second term). The XB70 and B36 are worth the drive.
ReplyDeleteKalamazoo air zoo in Michigan is pretty cool too. Don't know if they still do it, but when I took my son there many years ago, you could sign up to go up in a plane. They took a plane up each day and it was pretty much a first come first serve deal. We were on our way somewhere and just stopped on the way through, so we weren't going to be there at flight time. Museum was definitely cool.
ReplyDeleteWhile we're making recommendations, there's always the SAC Museum in Omaha. When I was last there, it was "the other side of Offutt AFB". Now it's out west of town in its own building.
ReplyDeleteHenry Doorly Zoo is also worth a visit. I would suggest not eating at Durham's TreeTop Restaurant in the zoo, though. The food there reminded me of what you'd find in a vending machine.
Fantastic. I've always loved those B-58s. And they flew back when the Cold War was real.
ReplyDeleteThat museum is on my list of "must see" places. Thanks for the kick in the tail to get there.
I've been up in a B-17, standing, holding on with one hand to the pilots seat during take-off.
ReplyDeleteI've been up in a B-25, choking on the exhaust filling the fuselage during engine start-up and bouncing along in the wash behind the aforementioned B-17.
I've been up in a T-37 and done a barrel roll.
I've been in a C-141 during low level air drop training missions, and even had a hand at the air-to-air analogue refueling simulator, which was obviously designed by someone with no imagination because that involved a ten foot long model of a KC-10 in a hangar sized room waving around on an arm in front of a camera fed to the simulator cockpit. Why not a 10-inch model in front of a camera with the right lenses in a box the size of a half-bath, Poindexter?
It's not god-damned enough.
In an ideal world, there'd be daily flights of B-17s, B-24s and Lancasters from the Imperial Air Power Memorial Museum, flying from Bury St Edmunds and Thorpe Abbotts, running mock raids on Dresden, escorted by tourist-ready P-38s from Wattisham and P-51s from Steeple Morden, with cooperative opposing forces of FW-190s and ME-109s flying from Memorial museums across western Europe.
There'd be a daily flight of a B-36 on simulated Cold War deterrence patrol from Carswell AFB in Texas.
There'd be fights of F-104Bs out of airports all over and F-14s and A-7s out of airports near Navy towns.
And there'd be a waiting list of get into a seat on any of these.
I see these beautiful warbirds on static display at flight museums, or on gate-guard duty, and it makes me want to weep for what we've lost. Not the war footing itself, but the feel of flinging yourself skywards in an aluminum can packed with jet fuel and radio tubes and radars that work like a series of oscilloscopes string together.
Another vote for the Dayton Air Force Museum. The B-52 is just astounding.
ReplyDeleteI saw the SR71 in Kalamazoo.
ReplyDeleteI was moved beyond words. (I'm an aero engineer by schooling.)
Tirno, the ten foot model is for better depth of field and depth perception. Watts sham is full of apache and lynx helicopters flown by the Army Air Corps.
ReplyDeleteI've been to the AF museum several times. I haven't been in years and would love to go again. Since I live in Iowa, Indy is a stop on the way to check out that one. I've been past it back in my truck driving days and never had time to stop. That and the fact that it's not easy to find parking for a 70 foot vehicle.
ReplyDeleteAnother plus, the Kalamazoo museum is on my way home (small town near Flint Michigan where I was raised). I've been wanting to go there ever since one of my good friends died.
Looks like I have some stops to make. I love airplanes and helicopters. Especially helicopters.
Sweet wife, for my birthday one year found a guy that would take me up and give a introductory lesson. I spent 1/2 a hour flying a Hughes 269. The most fun I've ever had with my clothes on.
Since they didn't have the B-52 the last time I was in Dayton, do they allow you to go in it? I remember they had a B-17 fuselage that was set up to walk through.
The Hustler was a hell of a plane. Amazing that the B-52 lasted so long.
ReplyDeleteyou can't go in the BUFF at the AF musuem, as the wheels are sitting on about six to eight feet tall concrete pillars. This lets them have more room to park a few more planes under it's wings. There was a C 124 that you could walk through, and a cut away B 29, and maybe a couple others. The real nifty part of the musuem though you have to sign up for, a bus tour to the active side of the base, for the experimental/presidental hangars. There you've got the X planes from 1 to 70, and various AF Ones that you can walk through. The wife and I are going back this summer sometime.
ReplyDeleteSadly the presidential hangars tour is closed at the moment due to the sequester. Because that makes sense.
ReplyDeleteThey even have the damn street lights on base turned off at night.
Seeing the B-58 Hustler at Gruesome Grissom really brings back memories. Stationed there 78-80 as a KC-135A/RT Boom Operator assigned to the 305th Air Refueling Squadron, 305th Air Refueling Wing, Strategic Air Command (SAC), or as we called it Simulate, Authenticate, and Cheat.
ReplyDeleteTam, if you ever do make it over to Dayton for the Air Museum (or Hamvention), drop me a line (can contact me through The Gun Counter). A couple of brews is the least I owe you for all the years of free ice cream and weapons grade snark.
ReplyDeleteBesides, any excuse to go back out to the museum.
The B-58 ... if you were over 6' tall, and ejected, you lost your toes.
ReplyDeleteThe only aircraft ejection system tested on first on bears ...
Snowdog,
ReplyDelete"you can't go in the BUFF at the AF musuem"
Phrasing!
;)
Any else remember hearing sonic booms as a kid? Don't know if it was true, but my dad told me it was B-58's flying from somewhere around Cleveland on training runs. (I was in Hamilton, OH at the time.)
ReplyDeleteDang...I hate to hear the annex's are closed at the AF Museum. If they were open...I'd tell you to allow two days to see the musuem if you're like me and try to read everything.
B-58 Hustler was AWESOME!! Cold war made HOT!
ReplyDelete