USAF National Museum

• Our next two days of touring in Dayton were rainy, windy and cold. In better weather we would have checked out the city’s many fine parks and bike trails and ventured through its historic district on foot. Instead, we spent considerable time indoors. Our first place of refuge was the National Museum of the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. On a sunny day, it would look remarkably as in this Internet photo:
  

  

  The museum sprawls; there are three other hangars in addition to the one seen broadside above and outdoor displays as well. We stayed strictly inside on this very wet day, delighted to be under roof. The museum has many exhibits of old and new aircraft in “period settings”:
  

  

  

  

  Trying to see it all in one day can be quite tiring; we both needed to rest our legs often:
  

  

  In one of the hangars, four former Presidential planes (used by FDR, Truman, Johnson and Kennedy) were open for inspection:
  

  

  However, some internal aisles were a mere 17” wide! That was due to floor-to-ceiling plexiglass walls that protect the interiors from visitors. There were also many unusual and exotic aircraft --- this one, for example:
  

  

  That’s an XF-85 Goblin (vintage late 1940s), designed to be carried inside a B-36, from which it could be launched and later retrieved using that big hook. It had no need of landing gear. Its purpose was to protect the B-36 in a pinch if attacked. (Do you think its odd shape and scary name were meant to frighten away attackers?) Development of aerial refueling ended the Goblin program as conventional fighter aircraft were then able to protect the B-36 on long missions.
  
  The museum has numerous other exhibits besides aircraft and we did enjoy them. Three that stand out in our minds were the Bob Hope videos of his 50+ years of tours, entertaining servicemen and women; “Prejudice and Memory: A Holocaust Exhibit” made up of photographs, artifacts and memories of survivors who now live in the Dayton area; and the Berlin Airlift display, detailing the 1948-49 effort to supply a city’s needs solely through the air.
  
  It was a day well spent --- and it kept us dry.