Joe & Deb USA 2014: Day Twenty

The Comfort suites are ideally placed for plane geeks wanting to go to the USAF museum – they’re right on the perimeter track, so a quick 15 minute walk gets you to the entrance lobby. There were a few real & armchair aviators in the motel when we arrived for brekkie, easily spotted as they usually wear aircraft related clothing like t-shirts or caps (and I was no different with my RNZAF t-shirt!)

After brekkie, Deb drives me over and basically I start from one end and work my way down. The Museum’s collection is mostly housed in three huge hangars now, with two other hangars on the base itself ( Wright-Patterson AFB) storing the ‘Presidential’ and ‘Research and Development’ collections. Only a few aircraft are stored outside now which is good as they will be maintained and preserved far better.

The hangars start with the early years ( pre and WW1) , moving onto preWW2 and WW2 then South East Asia , the Cold war and Korea. The collection is tremendous, with a huge range of aircraft to view. Unfortunately, the hangars are quite dimly lit, so photography is hard ( a volunteer told me they do this to prevent deterioration of the exhibits) but that’s a minor gripe, the collection is amazing and many are exhibited in small dioramas and the like ( for example showing servicing, or in one case a cadet having crashed a plane)

They have some huge aircraft in these hangars and it beggars belief they can fit them all in, but they do. Some of the biggest aircraft operated by the USAF are there, including the B-52, C-133 Cargomaster , C-124 Globemaster II and the B-36 peacemaker – and not to exclude several 4 engined bombers and cargo aircraft.

I had a good few hours wandering amongst these aircraft, occasionally chatting with a volunteer, trying to take good photo’s ( I took mostly bad ones) and about 11:45 I met up with Deb ( quite by chance) just in time for lunch. However while the USAF can put on a good museum, they can’t do lunch so we had a pretty indifferent salad (all salads were covered in grated and highly processed cheese!) and wrap.

As mentioned, there are two separate hangars that house the Research & Development and Presidential aircraft, so to get to see those one has to register with a photo ID ( I used my passport) and book to go across on the bus. I duly did this and my tour was at 1:30, so that would take us nicely to our ETD from Dayton.

Thus at 1:30 we all gather in an auditorium where we are given the rules ( no photography or video of any kind, and no wanderin’ off onto the base ) and then jump on a bus to go across to these hangars.

These are just as good as the main selection and have some real gems in there, like the Boeing 707 that took JFK to Berlin where he gave his famous speech, and then carried his body to Washington with Lyndon Johnson being sworn in during the flight, or some of the most famous & unique experimental aircraft that pretty much paved the way for aviation today (and a few clunkers as well).

We had a happy hour there – there are no barriers on the aircraft in these two hangars, unlike the main collection, so you can get right up close to the planes, but have to be careful you don’t spear yourself on a pitot tube or walk into a wing !

When that was over it was time to get on the road towards Winterset and the bridges of Madison county – all in all I spent about 6 hours at the USAAF Museum and it was a fantastic place to visit. However despite wanting to buy something from the shop, I just could not decide as they had a great range of books and kits ( and typically , all the books I wanted to buy were very large and heavy!) – so discretion was the better part of valour and I left with photos and memories only.

We got started on the road and drove until about 8:30pm (we gained an hour crossing from Eastern to Central time) when we decided to stop for the night at Galesburg. The drive was pretty good but lots of roadwork’s that occasionally slowed us down. Another pet peeve is truckies here will try & overtake each other, so one will move into the ‘fast’ lane (left hand side) and then dribble and inch their way past the truck they’re trying to overtake! It’s hugely frustrating as it blocks both lanes for ages until they either get past or give up and slot back into the right hand side!