As I am in Indiana over 4th of July with my family, my dad finds information about a massive Air force base in Dayton, Ohio. My dad and I got up at five in the morning and we headed torwards Ohio that was about 4 hours away. For me it was maybe thirty minutes, because I slept at least 3 and a half hours. But when we arrived there, I was in shock. You come upon a massive complex that is behind acres of grass, and you can plainly see a massive sign saying "NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE " We drove up and went in simple as that. The first thing I saw was a statue of a massive bronze very familiar mythology man of the name Icuras, even from this we got excited and we then continued to the exibits. Im not going to tell what's in them because I would highly suggest going there if close to or going to Ohio. But I will say that the exibits they had include
Early Years Gallery
Air Power Gallery (World War II)
Modern Flight Gallery (Korean and Southeast Asia Wars)
Cold War Gallery
Missile & Space Gallery
It was a very inspiring experience and I would highly recommend it!
Website: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/
On your back to Colorado, check out the Strategic Air Command Museum at Offutt Air Force Base westside of Omaha, Nebraska. Doesn't compare to the Wright-Patterson Base National Museum but is absolutely worth the vist.
I believe at Offut you can sit down in an old retired missile control room with your finger on the button and the key in hand.
Warren
Or detour to southeast Kansas and visit the Cosmosphere. Best collection of Ruskie space hardware and old war/cold war relics around. And as I recall, there's an Imax theater to help beat the heat.
I think the undisputed KING of the Dayton museum is the XB-70 Valkyrie. They only built two http://www.labiker.org/xb70.html Right beneath theXB-70 is a B58 Hustler, which was very cool as well (though much more common).
I have two books on Valkyrie that are extensively notated and autographed by Colonel Joseph Cotton, who was one of just a couple of guys to fly the Valkyrie. He is a fascinating man. Sometime Google up this airplane... the first one crashed under bizarre circumstances. The other sits at WP.
Offut is very cool as well -- you can stare nose-2-nose with a very real SR71, hanging from the ceiling as you walk in the door. Yowza!!
I don't recall seeing the new "white bird" in the museum. But I did see the Sr71 next to the stealth bomber and fighter.
There were 3 XB-70's built, one went down in flames during a photo shoot when another aircraft got sucked into it's vortex and clipped a wing.
Warren
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