We visited the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio on our way to Oshkosh. This is a two-day museum if you want to read more than half of the signs and absorb the history and technical information that is being communicated (vastly more detail than at the Smithsonian Air and Space). The experience starts with words from President Nixon:
The curators are less prone to the Wright Brothers worship that pervades Dayton:
A Jenny is exhibited and also explained:
The museum seems to be run by a separate foundation so they’re perhaps not required to follow Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s orders to refrain from dividing military personnel according to victimhood group. The museum celebrates Eugene Bullard, for example, not for being a military aviator but for being the “first Black military aviator”:
The drones that have transformed today’s battlefield were initially developed in Dayton, Ohio during WWI:
Here’s the only surviving Martin B-10 1930s bomber, out of 348 built:
The other side of the first massive hangar is devoted to more familiar World War II aircraft. Visitors are reminded that it was women who fought and won the largest battles, e.g., against bias, of World War II:
Here’s a less-familiar Douglas B-18:
At least in the signage, there are few mixed feelings regarding the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. The B-29 that devastated Nagasaki is on display:
On a more cheerful note, a PBY is painted with the rafts of the aviators rescued:
An original Me 262 is displayed along with a cutaway Jumo engine (note the Donald Trump/Elon Musk symbol on the tail):
The B-24 is named “Strawberry Bitch”. Maybe after someone got a bill for an annual on the four-engine machine?
The WWII hangar includes an original Mitsubishi Zero and this unusual Kamikaze trainer (one flight school that it would be great to fail out of!):
