Sunday, April 21, 2013

Grissom Air Musem

     Tam and I spent some time at the Grissom Air Museum yesterday, located right at the gate of the former Bunker Hill NAS ("U.S.S. Cornfield"), Bunker Hill AFB, Grissom AFB and present Grissom Air Reserve Base.  (Yes, kids, that's where they keep the reserve air.*)

     She's got pictures of planes all over her blog and Facebook, and knows enough about them to talk sense.  Me, well, I like to look at planes and I recognize some, but if push came to shove, I'd have to spend a lot of time with flashcards before you could send me out to spot MiGs.

     It's a photogenic place:
     In the center, the tower.  Tam did not so very much enjoy the climb.  Me, I'd kinda like to have one of these in the back yard, but I suppose the neighbors would object.

     Snapping the panorama:
      (She's well back from the edge; it was plenty windy and one of us is not so very fond of the heights.  Further, deponent sayeth not.)

     I like this, which shows that wasp-wasted high-speed shape to good advantage:

     It's a good museum, with seriously interactive exhibits indoors (three cockpit simulators you can climb right in: jet fighter, helicopter and transport!) and a small gift shop with interesting items, most of them child-friendly.  And it looks like there's a nice little eatery right across U.S. 31, too (hoping to try it next time I'm up that way).
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* My Dad served in the reserve forces, but not the air; when my sibs and I were young, he would ruefully explain, "I was in the Navel Reserve -- four years of spending nearly every weekend plus two weeks a year, sorting, counting and stacking navels."  Then he'd make with the thousand yard stare until we'd go away.  --The stories got even more deceptive as we got older, since he'd actually worked in a gun turret: "I didn't want to tell you kids, but you see, the Navy trained me as a powder room attendant..." 

12 comments:

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Driven past there a bazillion times (Dad was from Peru) but never went in. Need to do that someday.

rickn8or said...

Hard for me to wrap my arms around the fact that F-14's are now MUSEUM pieces...

+1 about the height thing.

Able said...

Powder Room Attendant! - ROFL

Bob said...

That tower resembles the US Forest Service fire towers that used to dot the landscape in the Florida of my youth. I remember we even had an afternoon kid's show out of Jacksonville featuring "Ranger Hal" who, when the show started, climbed down out of a mock fire tower on the set. And, of course, one of the series of Lassie TV shows featured a Forest Ranger named Corey Stewart.

Tim McCorkle said...

Alot of history at BHAFB born and Raised in Kokomo, I heard B-58s ROAR over at Full Afterburner during the Cuban Missle Crisis, Saw B-52s Land (While in the Back seat of a 57 Rambler(Passion Pink, white,and Charcoal!)
B-49 was their first Museam Piece... It Landed with a Broken Main strut, and couldn't Take Back off.

Tim McCorkle said...

Alot of history at BHAFB born and Raised in Kokomo, I heard B-58s ROAR over at Full Afterburner during the Cuban Missle Crisis, Saw B-52s Land (While in the Back seat of a 57 Rambler(Passion Pink, white,and Charcoal!)
B-49 was their first Museam Piece... It Landed with a Broken Main strut, and couldn't Take Back off.

Anonymous said...

If you had a similar tower in the backyard, just think of the antenna farm you could have.

Ed Jones said...

I worked on the radar and nav/boming computers on the B-58 in 69 and early 70 before they went to the scrap yard.

Old NFO said...

I've got to get there one of these days... Just throw food and I'll be out in a day or two... and yeah, your dad didn't want y'all to worry... He must have been a Gunner's Mate.

NAVIGATOR said...

ROBERTA

DO YOU KNOW THE TYPE OF GUN MOUNT (S)
THAT HE SERVED IN?

LET ME KNOW THE TYPE WILL FORWARD TO YOU DECLASS LINE DRAWINGS AND SPECS OF THE MOUNT

HISTORICAL NAVAL ORDNANCE SPOKEN HERE

Roberta X said...

Alas, Nav, I do not know -- he was in the Reserve in '49 through '51 (or so). I'll see if Mom remembers the name of the ship.

Chas S. Clifton said...

So you come by your subtle sense of humor through heredity. ;)