Dynamic Subspace

Tag: Air Force

A Visit to the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base, April 2024

A few weeks, I had an opportunity to spend an afternoon at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia before taking country roads south to visit my folks.

The Museum of Aviation is HUGE! There are four buildings (some with multiple floors) full of planes, drones, helicopters, support vehicles, equipment, and exhibits. There is a VR experience and other interactive exhibits. The four buildings are surrounded by additional aircraft that you can walk around (I walked 1.6 miles while I was there). Admission is free (but donations are accepted).

The museum is staffed by experienced volunteers/retired servicemen who are friendly and glad to talk and answer questions. They are also doing restoration work in the exhibit areas.

I was chuffed by the whole experience!

If you are an aircraft enthusiast, you owe it to yourself to visit here.

Below, I’m posting some of the hundreds of photos that I took there.

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle on Pedestal Outside

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle Wheels Down and Service Compartments Open In Main Building

McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle Cockpit

Pratt & Whitney F-15 Engine

General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon (Thunderbirds)

Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk

Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Its Weapons and Equipment

Rockwell B-1 Lancer

Boeing B-52 Stratofortress

Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II

McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

Lockheed U-2

Republic F-105 Thunderchief

Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and Convair F-106 Delta Dart

McDonnell F-101 Voodoo

McDonnell RF-101

North American F-100 Super Sabre

Republic F-84 Thunderjet

North American F-86 Sabre

Sikorsky MH-53M Pave Low IV

Sikorsky HH-3E Jolly Green Giant

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk

North American P-51 Mustang

Boeing B-29 Superfortress

Curtiss JN Jenny with Snoopy (Maybe his Sopwith Camel was being serviced!)

Space Lab Spacesuit

Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD)

Eugene Jacques Bullard, First African-American Fighter Pilot Statue

Walking Around Back

Is That a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk Ruddervator Behind the Museum???

Jose the Duck’s Uniform, Vernon Delaney’s B-17 crew of the 817th Bomb Squadron

April 30, 2024
Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum Outside Savannah, Georgia, July 2010

Concluding a week of aerospace museum posts (Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASM Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, 1929 Ford Tri-Motor Model 4-AT Visit to SSI, and Deutsches Museum in Munich), here is one featuring photos of a visit my folks and I made to the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum just outside of Savannah, Georgia in July 2010.

The Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum honors the Eighth Air Force which has its beginnings in World War II. It earned its “MIghty” moniker due to its overwhelming personnel and equipment capability, logistical prowess, and power application on the air battlefield.

At the time of our visit, it featured a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress in the process of restoration (I believe this has been completed now), Consolidated B-24 Liberator (nose), Boeing B-47 Stratojet, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17, Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 (Cockpit), McDonnell ADM-20 Quail Decoy Cruise Missile, and other WWII related exhibits for British, Japan, and Nazi Germany.

It’s on the latter one of the Axis powers mentioned–Nazi Germany–that I want to give a word of caution. I have included at the bottom of this post images of the Swastika and Nazi Germany uniforms. Like the museum including these in its exhibits, I include these images as a reminder that Nazism is evil and we cannot let that evil return to the world in whatever form it might take. I believe that there we cannot be freedom of speech maximalists in our modern world where there technology has created an extremely imbalanced marketplace of ideas and lopsided means of discourse. If we don’t draw a line in the sand about certain evils, it seems certain that we’re destined to fall prey to the paradox of tolerance. I believed the breakdown of discourse and the ease of manipulating people during the early phases of social media already presented a clear and present danger. Knowing what I know now about generative artificial intelligence (AI)’s capability to do the work of manipulation at a far greater scale and for less money than what was achieved previously, recognizing so-called free speech maximalist owners of a certain social media platform isn’t all about free speech at all and seems to support Nazi ideology, and fearing how our democracy seems weakened and fractured from the assaults culminating in the Jan. 6 insurrection makes me beyond concerned about a return of the Nazi specter–but instead of forming elsewhere, it could manifest here.

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Restoration

Consolidated B-24 Liberator (nose)

Consolidated B-24 Liberator (Recovered Window)

Boeing B-47 Stratojet

McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 (Cockpit)

McDonnell ADM-20 Quail Decoy Cruise Missile

Air Crew Exhibits and Gear

Nazi Germany and Japan Exhibits

Museum Rear

November 24, 2023