Today we visited the Air Force Museum, on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where they’ve got (at least) one of every plane that has ever flown for the US Air Force. I had very mixed feelings about the visit.

On the one hand, I was (very literally) slack-jawed for 2 hours while looking at a simply amazing collection of planes, many of which I’ve read stories about for years. Including the Bockscar, which dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki to end WWII. Including Spitfires. Including the Blackbird, and the Stealth Bomber, and B52s, and Meserschmits, and Zeros, and several Air Force Ones, and on and on. Alas, I wanted to see a P51 Mustang, and one of the volunteers there told me that there was one, but I never did find it.

Photos here.

On the other hand, I felt a profound sense of how much death and misery this collection of hardware had caused in the world over the last 60 or 70 years. Many of the planes had markings on the side indicating how many bombs they had dropped, or how many enemy aircraft they had shot down.

I watched a number of war movies over the Memorial Day weekend, on AMC. I continue to have a difficult time understanding the concept of solving international disagreements by killing one another’s young men. And the way that we hated the entire population of various nations, at various times in our history, is very saddening.

Anyways, enough with the deep thoughts. The photos have almost finished uploading, and they are very cool. I expect Matsu has some even better ones, and perhaps can be persuaded to post them at some point.