Wednesday 24th May – Historic Dayton, planes and tornadoes

As I’m such a nice person I was completely honest with Simon and admitted to finding another aviation attraction that he may be interested in.  Little did I know that the City of Dayton has so much aviation heritage that we accidentally went to the wrong one first!  Dayton aviation heritage National Historical Park (bit of a mouthful) is in the centre of the city, but is the birth place of aviation.  The Visitors’ centre is filled with exhibits itself, whilst the staff there give you maps with numerous other significant locations on the ‘aviation trail’ for you to see.  Really, we could have done with two whole days rather than one afternoon. 

In 1895 Wilbur and Orville Wright moved their printing and bicycle shops under one roof here (right). They designed and made their own custom-made bicycles, devising a gas engine to power their tools, mastered welding, built chain drives and brakes. All crucial skills used to build the world’s first airplanes. The cycle company was profitable, allowing the brothers to spend time during the winter months doing what they loved best – inventing. By 1897 they had a healthy interest in human flight.

We may have missed out on Kitty Hawk in North Carolina, but the fact is that whilst that was the location of the first official powered manned flight in 1903, here at Huffman Prairie Flying Field outside Dayton is where the Wright brothers developed the first practical airplane.  They made over 100 test flights in 1904-1905 until they had built a flying machine with a range of 20 miles at a time, the Wright Flyer III.

We sacrificed 30 minutes of our day to look around before we made haste to the location Simon had been really excited about – the National Museum of the United States Air Force.  This is the worlds largest aircraft museum and was going to take some time to see. So, when we arrived with only 3 hours of the day left to see four hangars full of planes, I let Simon get a head start whilst I grabbed lunch before catching up with him.  Over to our aviation correspondent to bang on about, I mean explain the precious rarities within this museum…..

Struth has asked I keep this short. I’ll try, but no promises – it is the largest museum of its kind in the world! It’s basically four very large hangars, which each display aircraft from different eras. Hangar one – WW1 and WW2, hangar 2 – Korean, Vietnam and Cold War era, hangar 3 – modern day and hangar 4 – Space, future and experimental aircraft. It’s all very well done and all very well presented.

There are some truly unique exhibits, from the first U.S designed and built bomber (the Martin MB-2, above) from the 1920’s, to the current Stealth Bomber (the Northrop Grumman B2 Spirit, below).

The B2 (left) next to the SR71 (right)

The B2 was displayed alongside an SR71 Blackbird, which I’ve spoken about before, though it looked awesome to see them together… There were some gems from the two world wars. Including what was effectively the first missile. The Kettering ‘Bug’ (below) was a torpedo fitted with wings, an engine and a propeller. It would take off and fly towards the enemy. After a certain amount of time, an electronic switch cut the engine and the wings then ‘fell off’. The torpedo would then plummet towards the ground and explode on impact. This was in 1917!

The model 11 Ohka

The museum has various German weaponry exhibited, ‘V’ bombs, aircraft and even a captured anti-aircraft gun emplacement, though of all the captured weaponry, I thought the Japanese Kamikaze Plane (the model 11 ‘Ohka’) was particularly interesting. These were introduced during the final months of world war 2, when the Japanese resorted to using aircraft for suicide bombing in an effort to destroy American warships. These ‘Rocket Planes’ would be dropped from a Japanese bomber, where their rocket engines would accelerate them to over 600mph and the pilots would fly them into the enemy ships, where the 2,000lb bomb in the nose would then explode. The aircraft on display at the museum is a captured MXY7-K1 Trainer.

F22 raptor (lower plane)

I was also surprised by the amount of current ‘Stealth’ technology on display. As well as the B2 Stealth Bomber, there was an F22 Raptor and an F117 Nighthawk, along with various drones and examples of ongoing Stealth projects – manned and unmanned. All great to see up close.

F117 Nighthawk

If you walk through the missile room there is, amongst other missiles on display, a current generation Minuteman 3 ICBM. This is the U.S.A’s current land based Nuclear Missile. Its massive and sits in silos that look like something out of a James Bond movie… 

 Finally, we made it into the Space and Experimental hanger. There is so much in here that deserves a mention, however I’m told I have to keep it short(!) The Titan Missile is so big it has to be seen to be believed and the Apollo 15 capsule that bought the astronauts home from the 4^th moon landing is displayed there.

The titan missile (above) and Apollo 15 capsule (below)

However, for me the most impressive exhibit – and probably my highlight of the day – was seeing the North American XB-70A Valkyrie. This was designed in the 1950’s as a strategic bomber capable of Mach 3. It was so far ahead of its time that nothing would’ve been able to catch it, thus giving the Americans a massive advantage over any enemy. However, it was costly to develop and the U.S government scrapped the project, favouring the use of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM’s) to deliver their nuclear weapons. As such, only two were built, one was destroyed in a freak mid-air collision, leaving this Valkyrie as the only remaining example in existence. The scale of this aircraft is huge and wherever I stood within the hanger I still couldn’t get it within the frame of one photograph (below).

With no more aircraft museums on our ‘to do’ list, this museum was a great one to finish on. I’ll hand you back to Struth…

At one point today Simon suggested that this may be the best aviation museum we have visited with the most complete collection of aircraft. My reply was ‘What? So we didn’t have to do all those other ones?!'

On Air Force One re-enacting Johnson's swearing in

I enjoyed spending some time on a collection of Air Force One, Presidential aircraft.  Most notably, the Boeing VC-137C SAM 26000 (above), which was the first jet aircraft specifically built for use by the president of the United States.  Over a thirty-six year flying career the plane carried eight presidents (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the elder and Clinton) and countless other dignitaries on Special Air Missions (hence, SAM).  It also has the connection to US history of being the plane that Delivered JFK to Dallas in November 1963.  Following the assassination, Lyndon B Johnson was sworn in as the new president aboard this aircraft and the aircraft then carried Kennedy’s casket and President Johnson back to Washington, DC.

As is customary, we were one of the last to leave the building after closing.

Thankfully, the Wright brothers memorial a couple of miles down the road was open until 8pm so that was our next port of call:

We aimed the RV towards the next PA State Park on our way towards Indiana which should have been only an hour away.  Suddenly, an emergency alarm cut off the radio station and warned of the possibility of a tornado forming from a thunderstorm in the Dayton area.  The announcer reeled off a load of place names we didn’t recognise.  I perused the road atlas. Oh. The town of Gratis they mentioned (right) is exactly where we are heading as the park is on the far side of the town. 

Simon was driving and thought it would be amazing to see a tornado.  I wasn’t so sure. When an emergency transmission cuts off the radio and tells people in a very specific area to seek shelter, especially if you are in a mobile home, I guessed it was for a very valid reason!  Eventually, the increasingly dark grey sky ahead combined with lightning flashes made me nervous enough to make Simon pull over.  The plan – park behind a large store and if worse comes to the worse, we grab our passports and a hand full of valuables and run inside for shelter!

That's a scary looking cloud.....

One of the wonders of listening to the radio – the adverts – reminded Simon that Dominos are doing large pizzas for only $5.99 this week.  If I was making us stop for no good reason (apparently), the least we could do is stop somewhere worthwhile so we can get dinner in the process!  The nearest branch was in Germantown only 15 minutes away so off we went.  We even managed to steal Domino’s Wi-Fi in the RV to be able to stream some TV whilst we ate our pizza!  We were just debating whether to move on when an incredibly loud siren started going off.  Not being local we thought we’d better check the meaning with the staff inside.  Yep, that’d be another tornado warning.  They advised hanging around for the next 30 minutes and offered us shelter if need be.

Thankfully, the alert passed by and we continued towards the state park.  By now, the interruptions on the radio were more frequent and each time I’d hear the at-risk towns and check them against our map.  Luckily the worst of the storm appeared to be tracking away from us now, north and east. In fact, they specifically named the air force base in Dayton as being one of the places where people needed to seek shelter.  And this time there were reports of a tornado actually on the ground, not just a risk.  I hope everyone made it to safety okay.

Back on the road to the western limits of Ohio there was localised flooding on many roads.  We pulled onto the State Park grounds well past 9pm, finally relieved to be there.  Until we reached a completely flooded and impassable section of road prior to reaching the campsite.  But even out here in the sticks, within seconds a police officer turned up to cordon off the road and advise us that we could register to use the horse camp back towards the main road seeing as we couldn’t reach the normal campsite.  How fortuitous was his timing?!  We turned around and found an electric hook-up on the horse camp which was only $11 with our PA membership.  It wasn’t even raining by the time we hooked up. But at nearly 10pm this is one of our later check-ins of the trip so far!  We battened down the hatches, not sure if the night would hold more storms in our direction….