Air Force Museum, Dayton, Ohio

Today was a great day!

Today was a workout day and after finally rolling out of bed at 8:00, we got to the exercises.  The local roads seemed quiet, so instead of sticking close to the campground I ventured out and ran through the cornfields of southern Ohio and swear it was uphill both directions.  By the time we cleaned up and made some phone calls, it was lunchtime so we cruised to the local town and chose a restaurant that turned out to be a hangout for the locals.  What a feed, and cheap too.

After lunch, we headed for the Air Force Museum at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base.  You can easily spend several days here.  Three enormous hangers house most of the collection, and several of the artifacts are unique or sole-surviving examples.  It was striking that most of the artifacts were in actual use at one time and many saw wartime action.  This is truly a fine collection that is well organized and maintained.  Any visitor to this part of the country would be well served to visit this museum.  After several hours we only hit the highlights and plan to revisit the museum someday.

Monument at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, to the pilots who flew "Over the Hump" in WWII. Marty's father was a passenger one of those flights. Rock at bottom right is part of monument and a gift from the Peoples Republic of China.

Reverse side of CBI monument.

P-26A Peashooter. The first all metal monoplane fighter in regular service.

Spad XIII, the preferred fighter for American forces in WWI.

Sopwith Camel, one of the first fighters used by American flyers in WWI.

MXY7-K1 Trainer that Japan used to train kamikaze pilots to fly the "Cherry Blossom" rocket bomb. The only surviving example of the Cherry Blossom is in the Smithsonian and a picture of it is on this web site. The real thing didn't have a landing skid.

Bockscar, the B-29 that dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

ME 163B "Komet" rocket plane developed by Germans in WWII. This is one of the only surviving examples. An example of the rocket motor was also on display.

P-39 Airacobra, a plane mostly sent to Russia during WWII. Display showed plane in a Russian setting complete with snow.

Marty with 30mm Avenger canon that is mounted on A-10 Warthog. This is good for ridding the neighborhood of unwanted armored vehicles.

Marty in front of Mark 41 Thermonuclear bomb, the first hydrogen bomb deployed by United States. This one has been disarmed.

Jeanne in front of an East German Trabi car and part of Berlin wall that was part of the Cold War display. We saw these cars actually running during our visit to Germany. This one may not be in running condition.

We returned to the coach, prepared a light dinner and watched some TV.

All in all, it was a great day.