Air Force Museum & Wright Brothers, OH

I had planned for Kevin to be at Hamvention (ham radio convention, see post from last week) today as well but he got all he wanted done yesterday. So today we went to Dayton, Ohio, to National Museum of the United States Air Force. The drive was through the fields and we see some corn a few inches high. Lots of fields bordered by trees and old farm houses and barns. We got there right at 9:00 a.m. when it opened. This place, wow. It is free, even parking is free. There are over 350 aerospace vehicles and missiles and covers over 20 acres of inside space! It is 4 humongous buildings that look like airplane hangers and is next to the air base. I read it is the largest museum of its kind in the world.  The museum flowed great and started with balloons.

There is a photo of a guy hanging in the tree where his balloon got caught. I laughed and said, “Take a picture and THEN cut him down.”

Highlights: we saw the Bockscar – this is the actual plane that dropped the 2nd atomic bomb on Japan. The decal has Salt Lake on it. Why? Google told us it is because that is where the people trained to fly this plane. We also saw the Memphis Belle. This was named because the pilot had a fiancé in Memphis. All those planes have been used somehow and the great information signage would say how this particular plane/vehicle was used and the story of it and getting to this museum. 

In the B-52G we saw behind the co-pilot is a coffee pot all buckled in. Guess they needed it on all those long flights. I had never thought about needing a coffee pot buckled in. We saw the Blackbird and Kevin said how funny that when we saw a Blackbird at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, it looked huge. Here? Kind of dwarfed among all the bigger planes. HA 

One plane that looked like a small Blackbird, had 4 prongs sticking out the front. I told Kevin those were bayonets. HA He said, “cow catchers” and then we said “snow pusher in the sky.” We were laughing so hard!  

The Osprey was neat to see the big parts that make it a helicopter or a plane. Another highlight was an elevator that was installed on a plane for President FDR and his wheelchair. We even walked through the narrow plane. We were there until after 4:00 p.m. And the wonderful part…all but one film that we saw had captions! Great accessibility. 

As we were leaving, we saw a lot of people in wheelchairs being pushed by people with same color shirts and lanyards. I asked the information guy what was going on, because we also saw a huge area of tables being set up. He said it is Honor Roll and they are veterans. They are stopping here before going on to Washington, D.C. They will tour and then have a honor dinner. Ah, that is so awesome! He said he was so glad I asked what was going on. 

From there we went to the west side of Dayton to Dayton National Cemetery. It is in an area that is very run down. Lots of trash around and falling down houses and buildings. The cemetery, though, is beautiful. Find A Grave (footnote 1) had 7 photo requests here. I was able to quickly find the 7 requests and fulfill them. What an honor. 

Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park consists of the Wright Cycle Company building and the Wright-Dunbar Interpretive Center, which is the restore Hoover Block, plus the new Aviation Trail Visitor Center and Museum. Inside the visitor center we were greeted warmly and told there is a tour of the bike shop later. Yes, we will want to do that tour. Then, without us asking, she said the film is captioned and got up and watched the start to make sure captions were working. So great! It was fun to be here to learn more about the Wright Brothers who lived and worked here along with having been to Kitty Hawk, as well.

On the second floor where the Wrights had their printing shop, we see a printing press but it has a large cream colored cloth covering it. The display sign says that Wilbur and Orville made their own printing press in 1888. They didn’t leave a lot of information about the press. No one knows, today, what the press looked like nor how it worked. So the National Park Service says, “which is why the press is represented as a covered piece of equipment in this exhibit.” I thought that fabulous! There are ink stains on the floor. We sure love seeing history come together. 

*The blog posts are taken from my daily travel journal. Would you believe – it takes me a 1/2 day every week to whittle down a week’s worth of journal so it won’t be too long for the post each week. HAHA Thank you for reading!

1. Find A Grave – https://www.findagrave.com/about