We spent a couple of hours at this museum in McClellan Park about 1/2 hour from our home. We had never been there before and we found it very interesting!
Part of this was due to our tour guide who is a good friend, Eric Magnusson. He served as Dan's Executive Secretary while he was stake president. He gave us what he called "the LDS tour." He had a lot of stories to tell and was very enthused and knowledgeable. We learned a lot!
This is the Bubbleship that was used in the movie, Oblivion, starring Tom Cruise.
Most of the rest of the tour was outside learning about these planes:
An LDS flier, Brother Fisher, earned the first Vietnam Medal of Honor rescuing another flier.
This helicopter was known as the Jolly Green Giant. After combat service in Vietnam, it was repaired (riveted metal patches over the bullet holes) and became a search and rescue helicopter.
Elder Robert D. Hales was a jet fighter pilot for four years and flew this type of plane above.
This is basically a tank destroyer. One bullet coming out of those rotating holes on the very front could actually destroy a tank! That seemed amazing to me.
This one is called the Sabre Dog.
Elder Uchtdorf flew this type of jet.
I thought this was fun because of the nicknames:
Here was an unusual one if you can see that round bowl thing on the underside and the domed tower coming out of the top. They housed radar and were used for many years off both of our coasts to detect enemies.
We got to go aboard this transport plane. Sometimes it carried supplies and sometimes paratroopers who would sit along each side waiting for their turn to jump out. It reminded me of what we learned last summer while visiting Omaha Beach in France and I mentioned that to Eric.
He said this next plane right here actually flew on D-Day!
Here it is:
Last we learned that this was the type of plane the Candy Bomber, Gail Halvorsen, flew and along with his fellow pilots they dropped over 23 tons of candy over 9 months in Germany to the children. Fun side note from Eric: Gail Halvorsen was his stake president when he became engaged and so he had interviews with him.
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We then went back inside and saw this contraption. It's a kite! And they can be used to generate power much like modern windmills.
So much of this is beyond my comprehension--all of the aviation and space stuff. Wow! And then we saw this photo from the Hubble telescope and Eric explained that each small dot is a whole entire galaxy. Now that is really beyond my comprehension!
Not only was the tour interesting and full of stories and facts,
Eric also added some spirituality to our tour. He had read an autobiography of Charles Lindbergh and shared with us the story of his being 22 hours into the 33.5 hour flight across the Atlantic flying the Spirit of St. Louis and he wrote about a spiritual experience he had at that difficult point in the flight in which he felt surrounded by family and friends urging him on. He could sense their presence. He had printed out a copy of the story for us.
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We ended our morning with a lunch stop at Costa Vida for our favorite Sweet Pork salad.
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