8/18: Indy-Dayton, Ohio: National Museum of the Air Force

Steven joked that we needed to break up our 'long' three-hour drive from the capital city of  Indianapolis, Indiana to the capital city of  Columbus, Ohio so we stopped about the last possible stop in Indiana at Thistlethwaite Falls. On this site in 1854, Timothy Thistlethwaite and his brother-in-law dammed the river using farm teams to place large boulders at the bottom of an earth-and-stone-fill in the river channel. This changed the course of the river to flow into a new channel over a rocky ledge which formed Thistlethwaite Falls.

Entering Ohio, neither Steven nor I had been aware that the western section of Interstate 70 had been designated National Aviation Heritage Area. That made sense, though, as we approached the National Museum of the United States Air Force about twenty miles west of Dayton. It was the world's oldest and largest military aviation museum spread over 1.1 million square feet under one roof. 

We found out in the Early Years Gallery that when the US Army Signal Corps purchased the Wright Military Flyer in 1909, it became the first military heavier-than-air flying machine and it remained the only Army airplane for almost two years. Wilbur Wright used the plane to give flight instructions. 

Maneuvering wheels were placed under the 1909 Flyer to allow the aircraft to be moved while on the ground but they were detached prior to flight.

In 1911, the US Army Signal Corps purchased its second airplane, a 1911 Model D Type IV because the military version could easily be disassembled and transported on Army wagons. 

During WW I, the pilots and observers of the Army Air Service destroyed 776 enemy aircraft and 72 balloons in combat and dropped more than 275,000 pounds of explosives. But that success came with a high price with 569 killed or wounded in action. From these humble beginnings, the airplane emerged from WW I as a proven weapon capable of decisive action against the enemy. The importance of air power had been demonstrated, and it would revolutionize the future of warfare. 

Eugene Jacques Bullard, an American volunteer in the French army,  became America's first Black military aviator and one of the few Black pilots in WW I. Born in 1894, Bullard left his home in Columbus, Georgia, at just 11 years old to travel the world! By 1913 he settled in France to be a prizefighter but when war broke out a year later, he joined the French Foreign Legion where he achieved the rank of corporal as an infantryman. He later was one of nearly 200 Americans who flew in the Lafayette Flying Corps. He distinguished himself in aerial combat and was officially credited with shooting down one German aircraft. Following the war, Bullard remained in France, and when the Germans invaded France in May 1940 he again signed up to serve his adopted country. 

I thought it was more than a tad unusual that a Ford Model T Ambulance used during WW I was displayed at the Air Force Museum! The Allies used thousands of Model T cars and trucks because of their low cost, light weight, and easy repair. Many American Field Service and Red Cross volunteer drivers including writer Ernest Hemingway and cartoonist Walt Disney drove Model T ambulances. 

Tethered balloons like this Caquot Type R Observation Balloon allowed WW I observers to see as far as 40 miles behind enemy lines to spot troop movements, chart trench systems, and direct artillery fire. The observation balloon most used by Americans was named for its designer, French designer Lt. Albert Caquot. His hydrogen-filled balloon could lift two passengers in its basket plus charting and engineering equipment to a height of about 4,000 feet in good weather but normal operations were between 1,000 and 4,000 feet.

The WW II Gallery: This balloon, manufactured by Britain in 1944 for use in WW II, is believed to be the only survivor of the limited numbers used in the war for parachute testing and noncombat aerial observation and photography. It was donated to the museum after American and British WWI balloon veterans located it in 1975. After the balloon fabric was mended and sealed, it was prepared for inflation and displayed in 1979.

WW II USAAF aviators often personalized their popular leather flight jackets, using such painted decorations as unit insignia, artwork that appeared on their aircraft, or a personal design. Sometimes, the decorations consisted only of a series of bombs, one for each mission. 

It sadly wasn't surprising to learn that because the US military reflected American society and law during WW II, it was racially segregated. Most Black American soldiers and sailors could only join labor battalions or other support positions. However, it was demonstrated conclusively that Black Americans could be full members of the Army Air Force if given equal opportunities. 

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s anticipated that the US might be drawn into a war in Europe, his administration began a pilot training program in 1938. After Black leaders argued they should share with Whites the burden of defending the country, the government opened the pilot training program to Blacks. The first Black civilian-licensed pilots graduated in 1940 from Tuskegee Institute, a Black college in Alabama founded in 1881. 

Initially, White instructors conducted basic and advanced flying school at Tuskegee AAF. Later, Black combat pilots returned as flight instructors. 

The Institute and the nearby Moton Army Air Field became the main source of Black military pilots. Black aviation mechanics, technicians, and other flight crew were also trained at Tuskegee and other training bases throughout the country during the war. 

Tuskegee airmen became heroes to the Black community. Singer Lena Horne, one of their most ardent supporters, visited Tuskegee cadets. In late 2008, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site recognized Moton Field as a place of historic importance. Perhaps Steven and I can visit the site this summer en route to our annual beach vacation.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt supported the Civilian Pilot Training Program and the War Training Service. Here she was shown in 1941 with Charles "Chief" Anderson, a world-famous Black aviator before WW II and chief flight instructor at Tuskegee. When Anderson flew Roosevelt around the school, the short flight received positive media attention for Tuskegee and showed that Blacks could fly planes and that the program had the First Lady's complete trust. 

Quite a few people lined up to take $24 simulation rides but we were too frugal and not terribly interested!

In the Cold War Gallery, we learned about Women of the Rubble. We've all read that in the aftermath of WW II, Berlin was in ruins. Its population had been reduced by half, and nearly two-thirds of the city's 2.3 million citizens were women. Many of these women, known as Trummerfrauen or 'women of the rubble,' worked hard to clean up the city and reclaim the city. They cleared bomb-damaged areas through tough manual labor, separating usable bricks and construction materials from other debris. The Trummerfrauen have been celebrated not only for their clean-up efforts but also for helping to rebuild families and society in the city nearly destroyed. 

The Berlin Airlift carried about 2,325,510 tons of cargo into Berlin with coal and food representing about two-thirds of that. The rest of the tonnage was made up of miscellaneous cargo that included all the city's daily needs - from soap to medical supplies to newspapers. 

The children of Berlin, if not their dentists, loved the tons of candy provided by the US 525th Fighter Squadron! Children gathering near Tempelhof Airport would watch the C-54s landing at three-minute intervals, knowing that some pilots on approach would wiggle their wings, and candy bars and gum in small white parachutes would descend from the aircraft. You can see why the locals called the pilots Candy Bombers or Chocolate Fliers!

A new era in the world was entered when the crew of the B-29 Enola Gay released the first nuclear weapon, the Mk 1 atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, on August 6, 1945, over Hiroshima, Japan. Little Boy, a 9,000-pound gun-type weapon, was the result of the Manhattan Project which had begun in 1942.  When there no response to the demand for unconditional surrender following the bomb's devastation, conventional bombing raids continued. 

This Little Boy was operational when it was constructed in 1945 but was obviously completely demilitarized when it was put on display. It was repaired and repainted at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2004. 

On August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic attack against Hiroshima, Bockscar, a B-29, took off before dawn toward its primary target of the city of Kokura. When clouds obscured it, the crew proceeded toward the secondary target and the Fat Man atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. When the 10,000-pound weapon was detonated at an altitude of about 1,800 feet over the city, it yielded an explosive force of 20,000 tons of TNT over Nagasaki's hilly terrain. 

The bomb's yellow color enabled observers to easily track the bomb after it was dropped. Bockscar was flown to the US Air Force Museum on September 26, 1961. 

My emotions were conflicted coming so close to the planes and bombs that have made history and perhaps infamy due to the actions taken during the war and the resulting devastation wrought for generations in Japan. It seems trite to say that we hope that Enola Gay and Bockscar were the last planes the world will ever see carrying and then dropping nuclear weapons. 

After getting vaccinated for Covid-19 and the world returns to some version of normal, Steven and I hope that this fall we will be able to travel to Japan as part of an extended trip to Asia. Our plan is to make sure we visit Hiroshima and its Peace Memorial Park and Museum.

Integration of the USAF: In April 1948, the Air Force announced that it would desegregate to improve its combat effectiveness. A year later, regulations were published dismantling segregation. men joining the Air Force from then on were assigned according to their ability instead of their race. 

Copy of President Truman's Executive Order that banned segregation in the US armed forces:

We then entered the Missile Gallery. Since 1959, US Air Force strategic nuclear-armed missiles and those who operate and maintain them have been on constant alert. The gallery featured USAF missiles that helped maintain peace among Cold War superpowers and shaped the world's strategic balance for more than 50 years.

We discovered that the MK-17 was the first operational USAF thermonuclear weapon or H-Bomb - the 'H' referred to the hydrogen which was fused under intense heat conditions to produce unprecedented energy yields. The bomb was so heavy that when it was test-dropped pilots reported the bomber would soar upward several hundred feet after being lightened. B-36s carried the MK-17 from 1954-1957. 

One of the major advances that has affected the size of nuclear weapons since the 1950s was miniaturization because size is no longer an accurate gauge of a weapon's yield. 

The Minuteman 1A was one of 150 deployed at an airbase in Montana between 1962 and 1969. Improved range and accuracy in later models meant they could be deployed further from their targets in the former Soviet Union. Its later model, Minuteman III, is still in service and is projected to be a main nuclear deterrent well into this century.

Titan I, an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, was built by Martin Marietta, a company with a plant just a few miles from our house. When Titan I became operational in 1962, it provided an additional nuclear deterrent to complement the US Air Force's Atlas missile. 

Thor Agena A was a rocket that the US Air Force used to launch the world's first space photo reconnaissance satellites during the Cold War. Designed and developed to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile launch vehicle, Thor became one of the most successful spacecraft boosters ever built. Since being first test flown in 1957, it has been continuously upgraded to provide more lifting capability. The modified Thor was used four decades later by NASA to launch medium-weight payloads. 

Over the years, the USAF developed several types of launch vehicles for the ballistic missile program. These missile launchers were modified and used to place many USAF and NASA projects into space. The reliable Titan also was the booster for the first US commercial space launches.

We then headed to the museum's Space Gallery. Imagine the thrill of being an astronaut and wearing this Space Shuttle Extravehicular Mobility Unit or EMU! Variations of the EMU, the most advanced system used in spacewalking, have been used since 1981 in the Space Shuttle and International Space Shuttle programs. The Shuttle EMU was a modular system made to fit any-sized astronaut as it included a rigid, one-size-fits-all torso with arms and legs available to fit large or small crewmembers. 

This Space Shuttle Advanced Crew Escape Suit was used from 1994 until 2011 only inside the Space Shuttle during launch and return to earth. It protected astronauts in case the Shuttle lost pressure and its high visibility orange color made astronauts easier to spot in the water in case rescue was required. I remember watching so many astronauts wear these orange suits as they made their walk to the shuttle, don't you?!

This C-119J Flying Boxcar Satellite Catcher made the world's first mid-air recovery of an object returning from space when it caught the Discoverer XIV satellite in 1960 using recovery gear lowered from the open rear door. Satellite catching became an important and regular US Air Force operation to recover secret reconnaissance satellite films. 

In the Presidential Gallery we read that an important mission of the Air Force was providing fast, safe, and reliable air transportation for US presidents. The President's ability to travel all over the world at short notice has been critical to project the country's military, economic, and diplomatic power. Air Force One is operated and maintained by the 89th Airlift Wing's Presidential Airlift Group which has operated as a separate operational flying unit since 2011 solely responsible for flying the President. 

It was fun to see the memorabilia that had been collected by passengers and crew on Air Force One from the Truman, Clinton, Bush I, and Obama administrations! Ordinary items like china, playing cards, and even candy have been custom designed for the Commander-in-Chief and have made travel on the plane a prestigious and unforgettable experience. 

Imagine having such a fun souvenir - I don't think I'd ever want to devour the Hershey kisses!

There was no way Steven and I could pass up Columbine III, the plane named by President Dwight Eisenhower after Colorado's official state flower in honor of his wife who was an adopted daughter of our adopted state! The plane, the only Lockheed VC-121E built, served as the president's personal plane from 1954 until he left office in 1961. It was christened, not with a traditional bottle of champagne, but with a flask of Colorado water. The aircraft's most important mission occurred in 1955 when it flew Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to Switzerland for the world's first peacetime summit between the leaders of the Western democracies and Soviet leadership. 

SAM 26000 had a sad connection to one of the nation's greatest tragedies after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas and just hours later Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the new president aboard the plane. 

The same plane was used by Johnson in 1970 when he visited US troops in South Vietnam during the war. Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor for President Richard M. Nixon, traveled aboard the plane on thirteen trips he made to secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese in Paris. In 1972, SAM 26000 flew Nixon to the People's Republic of China on his famous "Journey for Peace," the first visit by an American president to China. It also carried Nixon on an unprecedented visit to the Soviet Union where he signed two historic nuclear arms control agreements. The plane was renamed by Nixon as the Spirit of 76 in honor of the country's bicentennial. 

In a nationally televised event, the USAF retired SAM 26000 to the museum in 1998 after 36 years of providing service and accumulating more than 13,000 flying hours. 

Prior to Covid-19, museum visitors could enter inside and ogle most planes' interiors at the museum. I wonder when people will be lucky enough to do that again.

I think I half expected little green men to open up this Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar that looked like so much a flying saucer right out of science fiction! The Avrocar was Canada's effort to build a supersonic, vertical takeoff and landing fighter-bomber in the early 1950s. 

Unfortunately, once prototypes proved that the aircraft had insufficient control for high-speed flight and was aerodynamically unstable, the project was canceled in December 1961. This was the first prototype.

When the revolutionary Northrop Tacit Blue aircraft was built in the early 1980s in great secrecy, it tested advanced radar sensors and new ideas in stealth technology. Its curved surfaces greatly influenced later aircraft like the B-2. Because the design of Tacit Blue also minimized the heat signature from the engines, its presence was further masked. The Tacit Blue aircraft was nicknamed The Whale for its unusual shape and because the single-engine intake on the top of the fuselage looked like a whale's blowhole! 

After Tacit Blue flew 135 times, the program ended in 1985, the aircraft was declassified and placed on display at the museum in 1996. 

The Space Gallery was our last stop at the museum.

The only Apollo mission with an all-US Air Force crew was the spacecraft, Apollo 15, also known as Endeavor, which had the fourth successful moon landing mission in July 1971. The command module was named after Captain James Cook's famous 18th-century scientific voyage. Apollo 15 was the first mission to use a lunar rover vehicle.

The mission's main goal was to land astronauts on the moon and return them safely to earth as beating the Soviets to the moon in the 'space race' of the 1960s was a critical part of the Cold War competition between the superpowers. Apollo 11 won the moon race when it landed on the moon and returned in July 1969. Fourteen of the 29 astronauts who flew Apollo missions were Air Force officers or had Air Force experience. 

We were lucky being able to enter the Space Shuttle Crew Compartment Trainer (CCT-1) so that was a kick! CCT-1 was one of three shuttle mockups that more than 300 astronauts trained in. It felt like we were training right along with the astronauts walking into the full-size mock-up with the same footprint of the actual shuttle. The ramp mimicked the outline of a plane with its wings. 

Modeled on the space shuttle Columbia in 1979, astronauts learned and refined their skills in this simulator. Astronauts trained on the Flight Deck's approximately 2,000 different controls and instruments related to the space shuttle launch, in-orbit operations, satellite launch and recovery, and the critical task of re-entry. 

It was hard to see the Mid Deck but that was where astronauts trained to carry out space experiments, eat, sleep, and hygiene needs. They also rode in the tiny mid-deck in removable seats during launch and re-entry. 

The CCT-1 arrived at the museum in 2012. 

After an engrossing but tiring few hours in the museum, it was a pleasant change to get out in the front air to wander around the US Air Force Museum Memorial Park. 

The shaded pavilion in the park was a perfect place to bring out our Coleman stove and make grilled cheese sandwiches, our go-to lunch on the road!

If you have but the slightest interest in the US Air Force, the origins of flight, early aircraft in WW I, the world's first nuclear weapons, the space race and so much more, I urge you to consider also stopping at the National Museum of the Air Force outside of Dayton, Ohio. Knowing we'd probably never be back, we opted to try and 'see it all' so I was a bit numb when we finally left the museum as there was almost an overwhelming amount to look at and digest. However, even though neither Steven nor I are science geeks, we still wouldn't have missed the opportunity to 'walk through history.'

Just a few miles away was the world's first airport, Huffman Prairie Flying Field where the Wright Brothers flew their plane. But we chose not to head out there because of wanting to make time for a stop before heading to Columbus, Ohio's capital.

Next post: The very unusual Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio!

Posted from the Denver suburbs on February 6th, 2021, on our youngest child's 29th birthday - wow, where have the years gone?! As always, I hope you and your loved ones are safe, healthy, and connected during these challenging times.