National Museum of the Air Force

National Museum of the Air Force

Tim and I followed the Aviation Trail while we were in Dayton, Ohio.  We didn't have time to tour all ten of the historic sites so we concentrated on those that were related to the Wright Brothers.  In one hectic day, we visited the Wright Cycle Shop, saw their 1903 Flyer at Carillon Historic Park, toured their trophy home at Hawthorn Hill, stopped by their graves in Woodland Cemetery and scouted out Huffman Prairie airfield where they flew their Flyer II.  The next day we spent at the National Museum of the Air Force before information overload and sore feet forced us to leave.  We agreed that this museum deserved several days to do it justice, days we did not have at our disposal.

The Wright Brothers' 1909 Military Flyer

Four large hangers house airplanes displaying military aviation history from its inception through the NASA missions.  Just think how it all began with the Wright Brothers' 1909 Military Flyer, the plane the Wrights finally convinced the U.S. War Department to buy.  In 1908 the U.S. Signal Corps sought to purchase a two-man observation airplane.  The Wrights entered the competition at Fort Myers, Virginia.  Concerned that a fatal crash would devastate their family, Wilbur and Orville never flew together.  That was a wise decision.  On September 3, 1908, Orville took off with Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge as the observer.  The plane crashed, killing Selfridge and severely injuring Orville.  But what the Wrights learned that day they incorporated into their 1909 Flyer and returned to the trials on June 3, 1909.  That was the winning airplane which the Signal Corps purchased from the Wrights for $30,000 and the start of military aviation.

Tim and I followed a tour guide through the hanger devoted to World War I and II aircraft.  Even though I'm not much of an airplane fanatic, three planes caught my attention: the Flying Tiger, the B-25 bomber flown in the Doolittle raids and the B-29 Bockscar that dropped the "Fat Boy" atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

One of WWII's P-40 Fighting Tigers

The P-40 was the United States' best fighter plane at the onset of World War II.  Most notably, these planes were flown by the 1st American Volunteer Group, the famed Fighting Tigers commanded by Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault during 1942.  The crews of these 99 airplanes, painted with their menacing shark-mouth design, tallied an amazing combat record, downing 297 enemy planes over Burma, Thailand and China in seven months of operations.  Because they were civilian volunteers, the rules of war did not apply to them.  If they were captured by Japanese forces, crew members could have been executed as spies.  By keeping Japan's focus on Asia, these brave Fighting Tigers earned the United States valuable time to gear up a wartime economy that churned out tanks, aircraft and ships during World War II.

The B-25 bomber used by Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle on the Tokyo Raid on April 18, 1942.

The Doolittle Raid was a daring bombing mission that on occurred April 18, 1942 just four months after Pearl Harbor.  Eighty volunteer airmen flying sixteen B-25 bombers led by the legendary Lt. Col. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle took off from the USS Hornet aircraft carrier in the early hours before dawn.  Their mission?  To strike back at Japan, bombing military targets in five Japanese cities in retaliation for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy on December 7, 1941.  After dropping their bombs, the pilots were to continue on to China where they were to land, but fifteen planes crashed in bad weather.  The sixteenth landed in the Soviet Union; its crew was held for more than a year before their release.  Of the 80 raiders, three were killed in action.  Eight were captured, three of those captives were later executed while one starved to death in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  The rest made their way back to the United States or to American forces.  The dangerous mission proved that Japan was vulnerable and gave Americans a tremendous boost in morale.

The Doolittle Raiders' Goblets

In December 1946 Doolittle and his raiders gathered to celebrate his birthday and raised a glass to toast those of their number who had died.  They continued to hold reunions annually.  At the reunion in 1959, the city of Tucson, Arizona, presented the Raiders with a set of sterling silver goblets, each inscribed with the name of one of the 80 men who flew on that mission.  At subsequent reunions, the roll of the raiders was called and a toast was made to those who had died.  The goblets of deceased members were overturned in the glass carrying case until the final survivor, 101-year-old Lt. Col. Richard E. Cole (Doolittle's co-pilot) in a private ceremony on April 18, 2017 at the National Museum of the Air Force, turned over the goblet of next-to-the-last survivor, 94-year-old Staff Sargent David J. Thatcher, and made the final toast to the Doolittle Raiders.

Also on display at the museum is the B-29 "Bockscar", the airplane that dropped the atomic "Fat Bomb" on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.  But that was not their original objective.  Dense clouds and drifting smoke from fires touched off by the previous day's bombing prevented them from releasing the atomic bomb on the city of Kokura.  Pilot Major Charles Sweeney and his crew circled the city for fifty minutes as they looked for the munitions plant there, one of the largest in Japan.  Running low on fuel and with Japanese anti-aircraft closing in, the crew aboard the Bockscar decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki, and over the city's industrial area, they released the Fat Boy.  Over the next four months, 80,000 people died, roughly half of them on the first day of the bombing.

Our World War II tour ran too long for us to catch the one about the Korean War in the next hanger.  I wish I could have heard the guide there.  During the Korean War, my dad served as a fixed wing  and helicopter mechanic.  It would have been interesting to see the aircraft he might have worked on.

We did make it to the final hanger in time to join the tour of the space age aircraft.

This final tour ended at the Presidential Gallery where aircraft used by U.S. Presidents were on display.  They included the "Sacred Cow" with its special elevator for hoisting President Franklin Roosevelt in his wheelchair into the plane's cabin and the Boeing Air Force One (shown below) which carried the body of President John F. Kennedy back to Washington, D.C. after his assassination.

Perhaps someday I can bring my father here.  He would love this place.