Given my commitment to running FlightSim.Com, which requires daily updates 365 days a year, I don't often get away and it's been years since I had a real out of town vacation. But just recently I had the chance to get out of town for a while for a real vacation. What exotic resort did I go to? Dayton, Ohio.
Some of you who share an interest in one of my other hobbies will know the main reason for a trip to Dayton in May. But flightsimmers and any aviation fan should recognize the name too. Though the Wright Brothers conducted their first actual flights in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, their airplane was mostly invented in Dayton and after those first few flights on the beach further flights often took place at Huffmain Prairie just east of the city itself.
There are a number of memorials and sites related to the Wright Brothers that can be visited around Dayton. You can even find their original 1905 Flyer III, which they considered the world's first practical airplane, in a local museum. But only so much time was available, so for this roadtrip the destination was the National Museum of the US Air Force.
When it comes to aviation museums, I'd guess that the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum is the one in the U.S. that all others are compared to. The Smithsonian is the "nation's attic" so they tend to get all the cool stuff. Well maybe so, but the USAF is the organization that actually flies a lot of the cool stuff and a lot of these objects end up in their own museum.
The Air Force's museum has quite a lengthy history, with origins dating back to 1923. Today, it's housed in three large hangar-like buildings that are open to the public for free. The location is the old Wright Field, and you can still clearly see the runways. The current Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is directly adjacent and with any luck visitors will see interesting planes flying in and out of there (see my last two photos for an example). In addition to the main buildings, there are two other hangars on the old Wright Field flight line that house even more planes but require some planning to visit since they are actually located within the air base.
I visited the museum previously many years ago, but it has expanded and changed quite a bit since that last visit. Today, the galleries are arranged in a chronological fashion, starting with the earliest days of flying and working throught WWI, WWII, the Cold War and right up to the space age. Mixed in among planes that primarily serve as representative samples of some type are ones that are particularly historic, such as "Bock's Car", the B-29 whose mission essentially ended WWII.
One disappointment in the way the museum has been rearranged is that their large collection of historic and mostly one of a kind X-planes (experimentals like the very impressive XB-70) have been moved from the main museum into the Wright Field hangars which means they can only be seen if you have a pass that will get you on the base or if you sign up in time for one of the limited buses that take people over from the main museum. Unfortunately, the buses will all fully booked so we had no chance to visit this area.
So, with just an afternoon available, our group took a quick tour of the museum. Even with about four hours available we did not see all of the main three buildings and of course completely missed the two buildings across the field. But still, the whole experience was aviation overload! No matter where you turned there was some fascinating and historic aircraft and you had to look up too as many more smaller planes were suspended from the ceiling! And just to ensure we stay somewhat on topic here, we did see and photograph a very early flight simulator.
I can't begin to tell of everything to be seen but if you want to learn more visit their web site at www.nationalmuseum.af.mil.
In this article I will share a set of photos that I took during our visit. I hope you enjoy them and maybe someday you'll have a chance to visit too.
There are lots more photos on the next page of this article. For best viewing, go to the next page and then click on the first photo. This will bring up the lightbox viewer that will let you see each image full size and easily go back and forth between images.
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