On Friday (January 2), my father and I visited the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
This is something of a pilgrimage for the two of us, who have been there together several times. My father was in the Air Force in the mid-1970s, and is a sometime volunteer at the museum. The first time we went was in about 1986. We always go to an IMAX movie, eat lunch in the cafeteria, look at Glenn MIller’s trombone and generally see what’s new. Sometimes we have to try to figure out what it is that we’re looking at together, and other times, my father is able to explain it to me off that bat. I always bring back astronaut ice cream for my wife.
If you haven’t been there, you need to go, whether you are into military hardware or not. There are notable aircraft on display–the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the Apollo 15 command module. Really, if you name an aircraft flown by the US Air Force or its predecessor organizations in the Army, they probably have it, with detailed descriptions so you can understand what you are seeing. The preservation staff at the museum is excellent, and it is really one of the best museums I have been to of any kind, right up there with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Field Museum in Chicago and the Carnegie in Pittsburgh.
Over the last twenty years, this place has only gotten better in terms of quantity (triple the square footage) and quality. In the Viet Nam section, there is an exhibit about the Wild Weasels, a unit that trained to go into hostile airspace ahead of other aircraft to get the enemy to disclose the location of their antiaircraft defenses. Not only is the role of these pilots documented, but you feel like you understand what it was like to fly over North Viet Nam with the intention of being shot at. This is what museums need to do.
I am always shocked and awed (no pun) by the hardware associated with the war that we didn’t fight–World War III. There are the bombers, of course. The B-29, the B-36, an enormous plan built to carry the hydrogen bomb; the B-52, and the last generation of them–the ones that beat the Soviets by outspending them. The B-1 to fly nukes in faster and lower than ever, and the B-2 “Stealth Bomber” that just doesn’t show up on radar. Scarier still are the missiles. You can look at Titans and Minutemen and the Peacemaker–the MX, as it was called in the press. There is a training simulator for the commanders of balistic missiles–with the two keys 12 feet apart, just like the movies. How many times do you practice launching the missiles before they put you down in a bunker with the real thing? Next to the MX was a MIRV–multiple independent reentry vehicle–a device that allowed one missile to carry eight nuclear weapons, each headed toward a different city. One weapon to kill thirty million people or so. Then, tucked in a corner next to the boosters was a little globe, about the size of a large microwave oven. You can’t tell what it is without reading the sign. If the military command was cut off from the guys in the field, a few of these little globes would have been launched into the upper atmosphere to broadcast the launch codes as a last resort. They thought of everything.
Wow. I don’t know whether to be indignant or grateful or angry or what when I see these things. Congratulations to the US Air Force for presenting their history in such a meaningful and thought-provoking way.
Tags: Dad, flight, National Museum of the United States Air Force, nuclear war, Wild Weasels