Today John, (my hubby), and I visited the best museum
ever! We have driven by it and never
stopped in so we made a point to check it out today and I’m so glad we did.
The Arizona Commemorative Air Force Museum is located at
Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ. You enter into
the gift shop and happily greeted by staff.
You enter into the hanger and greeted by one of the volunteers; our
guide was the nicest most knowledge volunteer ever, Mr. Baker.
He told us the history of each plane and the history of
Falcon Field; I had no idea. The hanger
is not only filled with the most unbelievable air craft from WWI, WWII, Korean
War and Vietnam but also includes so much memorabilia.
The second hanger is filled with planes they are restoring
and working on. Our guide let us in the
enclosed area and told us more history of the planes and the training they did
at Falcon Field during WWII. I couldn’t
get enough of the stories; fascinating.
There is a bomber they are working on called “Made in the
Shade” which we got to get close to.
They had the bomb bay open and inside the doors were signatures of
everyone that had a hand in this plane from builders to the crew. Even one of the many “Rosie the Riveter”
visited the museum this year and signed the bay door; so cool.
bomber door signed, Rosie the Riveter
The bomber, Sentimental Journey, landed when we were there
and we got to go through the plane. The
museum offers rides in this aircraft several times a day; we lucked out and got
to see it taxi in. All I can say, it’s
very loud 😊 You
enter the aircraft through a ladder that takes you up to the cockpit area. You had to stay very low when you enter
crawling into the next area where you can stand up. Boy, was it tight in there I don’t know how
these young men moved around in these planes; they had a crew of 10 in this
bomber. You next go through a cat walk
over the bomb bay to get to where the radio operator was. In the far back of the plane was the last gunner’s
area. He had his own door into his
area. You had to back out of the plane
at the back. It was so cool to be able
to actually go through the aircraft.
Our guide showed me an electrical outlet where one of the
gunner’s station was and told me that they would put on their normal underwear,
then a pair of electric underwear, then their uniform and on top of that their
flight suits; plug in their underwear to keep warm on their missions. I can image how cold it was flying in those bombers
with no insulation in the crafts.
On the outside of Sentimental Journey is a picture of Betty
Gable along with bombs and 2 decals of movie cameras. Our guide told us that this plane never saw
action in WWII. It made it over to the
Pacific but the war ended when it got there.
It should not have had bombs put on it but when it was used in two
movies they put the bombs on it. The
bombs represent how many missions and aircraft was on.
Notice the bombs and 2 motion picture cameras
After touring the planes on the tarmac, we went back into
the first hanger to finish our tour.
John went along the outside checking out all the memorabilia and headed
off to take photos of all the wonderful aircraft. Of course, I got a little artsy-fartsy with
my photos 😊
That motor was crazy!
If you have the opportunity check this museum out, it was fantastic! We spent several hours there and I would
definitely go back and check it out again.