Museum of the Air Force

Summer Vacation 2014

Our summer vacation didn't start off quite the way we expected.  We had to go to an OB appointment in St. Louis on the day we had planned to leave so we didn't get on the road until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Because of our late start we didn't have as much time at our first stop: The National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio.  We had planned on going Wednesday afternoon, but ended up squeezing a few hours in Thursday morning instead.  We didn't have a lot of time, but did manage to see a few things. The kids still liked it and loved seeing all the airplanes.  Here we are by a replica of the Wright Flyer.  I think the real Wright Flyer is in the Smithsonian, but it was cool to see a copy of it.

Under a B-18 (WWII era bomber)

Anna and some trailblazing ladies who have come before.

Anna was kind of scared of the whole museum 'cause it was dark and in huge hangars, so we were trying to draw attention to things that were less scary.  We watched the Disney propaganda cartoons but went quickly through the POW area.

Blackbird.

Matthew recognized this one from one of his airplane books.  I was impressed.  I guess it is pretty memorable.

Matthew flying the space shuttle landing simulator.  He flew it over and over until he could fly it without crashing.  Good thing it wasn't crowded.

Grant flying the simulator.  It was tricky.

On board a scale replica (sort of replica) of the space shuttle.  It was bigger than I thought.

And a not to scale replica.

And I liked this huge Air Force quilt they had too.  We found a square from a lot of the bases we'd been to.  Fifth row up from the bottom and third from the right is a red torii gate and a long skinny outline of Okinawa for Kadena Air Base.  :)

There are tons of cool things to see.  My favorite part was the walkway to the Cold War era planes that talked about the Berlin air lift.  Scott liked the interwar years planes.  Matthew said he liked the shuttle simulator best and Anna liked a model of a soldier giving a European boy a chocolate bar at the end of WWII.  I think Grant liked the big space shuttle, 'cause he kept asking to go back on it and John just liked walking around in the huge hangars.  Maybe Scott will get stationed there again and we'll get lots of chances to visit.