#34 - National Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB

This post is a few days late, since I haven't been around a computer much on our trip (which has been kind of nice).  Seeing the Air Force museum at Wright Patterson has been on my "to do" list for quite a few years. I've always heard that it is amazing, and we have driven right by the exit for it along I-70 on many of our cross-country trips. However, it seems like we're always passing by at 10:00 p.m. or 5:00 a.m., or we're just too far into our 24 hour trip that we don't care to stop and extend our trip any longer.  I always figured I'd get to see it "one day," so we scheduled "one day" into our road trip this time.  After spending the previous evening in Cincinnati (to see Jungle Jim's), we took the short jaunt up to Dayton on Saturday morning with plans to spend several hours at the museum. I knew our visit wouldn't be nearly long enough to see all the museum had to offer (I had been told you could spend several days there), but at least we would get a feel for what it had to offer. 

The museum did not disappoint!  The picture above shows only one of three hangars. In addition there are outside displays and another hangar which is serviced by bus only.  The hangars are arranged chronologically. I began at the beginning (what a concept!) and learned that the Army was sending up pilots for training pretty much as soon as Wilbur and Orville got off the ground.(Wait, you say, I thought this was the Air Force museum, not the Army museum.  Correct, but remember, the Air Force was originally the Army Air Corps.)  Interestingly, the early thoughts were that aviation would be useful for reconaissance only, and that air combat was just the figment of the over active imaginations of young pilots!  In 1908 the Army (specificall the Signal Corps) paid $30,000 for its first airplane, just like the one seen below.

It quickly became clear that if I were going to actually read about all the displays, that I might make it through World War I before it was time to leave (by the way the U.S. had fewer than 40 planes at the start of WWI while Germany had over 150!), so I largely browsed quickly through the rest of the museum. I learned some cool things like:

• Walt Disney and the Disney illustrators created numerous unit patches for various squadrons during WWII.
• As early as 1931 a vertical take-off and landing aircraft, calld an autogiro, was manufactured.
• B-2 bombers look SO awesome up close!

What an amazing collection!  Craig and I decided that he and I would love to come back on a future visit and spend a couple days taking a closer look.

Our detour to Wright Patterson gave me the opportunity for another first--one I tried to accomplish 20 years ago to the very week, but had to put on hold due to the death of my aunt.  I got to visit Fairborn, Ohio!  Where, you ask?  Good question, and no, there's no reason you should have heard of it.  It was the boyhood home of one of my good friends from USNA, and a bunch of us had a running joke about visiting this redneck town.  I was scheduled to visit him one Christmas break, but I instead traveled to my aunt's funeral in Iowa.  So, every time we passed by the Wright Pat exit on I-70, we also passed by the signs for Fairborn, and I would reminisce about my lost visit.  After wrapping up our morning at the museum, we headed into Fairborn for lunch--a mediocre pizza lunch in a nondescript, small, midwest American town.  Craig and I even picked out the motel we will stay at when we return for our weekend trip to the museum.  Fairborn was exactly as I expected, and I was thrilled!  A two-fer in the new adventures department, and both were awesome!