Detailed review by 1krispy1
1krispy1
Broomfield, USA97%
All my life I have been a big fan of all manner of aircraft, airplanes in particular. One of the Mecca for aviation enthusiast is the National Museum of the United States Air Force. The Museum is located in Dayton, Ohio. Which for me was similar to being located on the moon as I could not justify going all that distance just to see this museum. It seemed a long way to go. That is up until now.
That all changed recently. As luck would have it my girlfriend has a lot of relatives living in Ohio and many of them live in Dayton. This year there was to be a reunion in late July that she wanted to attend so we decided to do a road trip. As the saying goes, while we were in the neighborhood we thought we would stop by.
Some of the extended clan are also big fans of aviation so by the time we were ready for the trip to the museum we numbered six.
The museum is very easy to get to with a very large parking area. Both the museum and the parking are free. The museum is open every day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The only exceptions are Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years Day. The facility includes an IMAX theater. The museum is very extensive and one would be hard pressed to cover it completely in a day. Our visit covered four hours time and many of the exhibits did not get viewed. I guess I will have to go back another time.
When I was a younger lad I used to build model planes. There were many that I built that I felt I would never get to see in real life as they are very rare now, despite in some cases of thousands being built, for example in times of war.
For example going to almost any air show where there are vintage WW II aircraft being displayed or flown one will almost always find P-51 Mustang or perhaps a Spitfire. I have seen some B 17s and B 25s at air shows but planes like a B 36 one of the largest planes ever built and certainly one of the more unique looking planes with six big radial piston engines on the trailing edge of the wings as well as four jet engines to drive this monster I thought I would never see because there are only a handful of them still around. However one of these is on display at the National Museum of the USAF. It dwarfed everything around it.
Another of my favorites from building models was the P 61 Black Widow night fighter. It was capable of over 400 miles an hour and was among the first planes purpose built to carry radar from the design stage on. Many planes during WW II carried radar for night fighting like the JU 88 or the Mosquito but the Black Widow was the first built where the radar was not a strap on or after thought but integrated from the beginning design stages. It was a very impressive plane as I had it before me. In fact it is one of the photos I included for trivago from my visit.
There were planes from the early years including products from the Wright Brothers (they also were from Dayton where many of their early designs were built and where they lived). We also saw planes from WW I the years between the world wars and planes from the current.
Some of the things we did not get to as we ran out of time were the planes used by the Presidents of the United States, neither experimental aircraft nor the missiles and space exhibits. The museum also includes a memorial park which is located near one of the car parks which contains many interesting sculptures where one could spend a lot of time but we did not get to see much of that either.
There is also a gift shop that had many interesting items in it. This museum was fascinating and it was a lot of fun going through it. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in aviation.
National Museum of the USAF10
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Architecture
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It was easy to get to the museum. All the exhibits that I saw were on the same level as the entrance. There are some exhibits that had stairs and were narrow that could pose a challenge to an individual with mobility limitations. However most of the aircraft are viewable. The buildings are like large hangers so the aircraft are in a protected environment as are the visitors. The exhibits are all of historic value from some of the more interesting milestones in aviation history.
