In the grind of daily life, sometimes you forget to do fun, informative or satisfying things that bring you joy or make a memory. One of the things I love to do but rarely get to is visit a museum. They’re either too far away or expensive and end up sitting on a to-do list that goes unchecked.
Last weekend, however, I went to the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton and, unsurprisingly, had a wonderful time. I have been to the museum before (like many kids who went to school in and around central Ohio over the last few decades) but every time I go, I have a great experience and learn something new. As much as I enjoyed it as a kid, I enjoy it even more now that I’ve read more about planes and military history.
First, if you’ve never gone, it should go to the top of your list of places to visit. It’s open seven days a week, closed only on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, and isn’t that far away. Perhaps most importantly (and shockingly), it’s completely free to get in. It has more than 300 planes and other aircraft across four airplane hangars from the birth of flight through the space age and contemporary USAF jets. Each display is accompanied by a plaque or series of signs that give information about the plane and its time in military history. You can spend hours in one hangar. If you have gone before, you can absolutely go again – there’s just too much there to see to get it all in in one visit.
The areas I spend the most time in are the World War II Gallery, the Presidential Gallery and the Space Gallery.
WWII Gallery
The gallery has many, if not all, of the heavy hitters of the Second World War. From the iconic B-17 Flying Fortress to the P-51 Mustang, you can see each of the aircraft that participated in some of the biggest events in history. I’ve written in these columns before about my admiration for the actor and WWII veteran, Jimmy Stewart and while they don’t have his plane, “Mail Call,” they do have a B-24 Liberator on display similar to the one he flew. It’s one thing to read about the planes or see them in movies and pictures, but it’s another thing to see the four engines sitting idle on the wings or the barrels of machine guns poking out of its windows.
You can also see the infamous B-29 Superfortress called “Bockscar,” which dropped the atomic bomb, “Fat Man,” on Nagasaki in 1945. The plane even has a replica of the bomb sitting next to it.
Presidential Gallery
The gallery includes four versions of the famed Air Force One. You can walk through planes that flew Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. While the sides of the plane are encased in glass, from the middle aisle, you can see the seats and tables where some of America’s most famous men sat.
FDR’s plane has a specially made elevator to raise and lower the president’s wheelchair. JFK’s plane is the aircraft that flew him to Germany for his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech as well as being the plane that carried President Lyndon Johnson during the emergency swearing-in event following the JFK assassination in November of 1963.
Space Gallery
The gallery has aircraft displays but also has other pieces of history tied to the space program of the middle 20th century including suits, vehicles and other items from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects that sent NASA astronauts to space and the moon. The gallery has a reproduction of the suit worn by Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who joined Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the first, historic 1969 moon mission.
It also has the Apollo 15 command module which carried the first all Air Force crew to the fourth successful moon landing in 1971.
I’m already thinking ahead to my next visit and all the things I missed or passed by. This time around, I’m going to take more money for the gift shop and get there promptly at 9 a.m.
-Michael Williamson is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune