National Museum of the U.S. Air Force

Our second-to-last stop of our Yellowstone road trip was the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the world's largest military aviation museum, located at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, the hometown of Wilbur and Orville Wright and the birthplace of aviation in America. The museum consists of four large hangars that contain literally hundreds of aircraft dating from WWI and WWII, the Korean War, the Southeast Asia War, the Cold War, and the present day, and includes a gallery of Presidential aircraft, including planes used by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, and SAM 26000 (otherwise known as Air Force One) in which President Kennedy's casket was transported from Dallas and on which President Johnson took the oath of office. Other planes include a B-2 stealth bomber, a B-52D Stratofortress long-range bomber, and the B-29 Bockscar that dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Clare and Conor were not as enthusiastic as I was during our visit. I am certainly not a fan of military might and the defense industry, but the sheer display of so many aircraft in one place was quite impressive, and I would recommend a visit to the museum to anyone interested in aviation.