By Alden Frautschy, EAA 629986
Recently I had the chance to visit the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum in Nebraska. I was down visiting family in Omaha, and had been reminded by a few friends that I had to check this museum out. A quick look at their website showed that they had a few of my favorites like the B-58, B-36, and B-47, and a building full of airplanes sounded like a great way to spend a day.
When you pull up, the museum’s gate guard is a B-1A that was used as the avionics test bed for the B-1B program. Then you walk into the lobby and the first thing you’re greeted by is an SR-71 that looks like it’s flying through the lobby. It’s an incredible sight, to say the least.
As you enter the main building you start to get a feeling for the size and scope of the museum’s collection. It’s housed in an old Cold War-era aircraft hangar and it feels like it. Good thing I had a sweatshirt on! But as you start wandering through the aircraft, you kind of forget you’re slightly chilly. Ahead there’s an F-111. Oh, there’s a B-17. And a B-47. A B-52. And looming large is a B-36. That’s just the ones you see right away. There are tons more. Just about every aircraft from the SAC arsenal seems to be in here.
As you start looking at the aircraft, you notice something. A lack of barriers around the vast majority of the airplanes. It adds an entirely different feel to wandering around the aircraft, as if at any point the alarm will sound, the doors could open, and you’ll be helping prep it for its next mission.
As I said before, there were three aircraft I really wanted to see. The B-47, B-58, and B-36. I’ve seen all three at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, but here, with no barriers, I could get right up next to them and get an amazingly close look. I must’ve circled each airplane a half dozen times as I took in every rivet and dent.
I found myself with a whole new appreciation for just how massive the B-36 is. It’s so large that as they work to restore the aircraft, it’s being done while the aircraft is on display. Walking down the bomb bay is wild. It’s built more like a skyscraper than an aircraft!
The second hangar had more incredible aircraft, including a KC-97 tanker and a personal favorite of mine, the C-119 Flying Boxcar. I always thought it’d make the ultimate camping machine. There’s even a spot to stand and watch the volunteers in the restoration shop — the day I was there they were working on their F-117.
I’ve barely scratched the surface of the exhibits the museum has. There’s an intense and haunting Holocaust exhibit told through the eyes and photos of the Nebraska servicemen who helped liberate the camps and the survivors. There was a temporary exhibit about the Cold War in film and TV. Being a film school graduate, that was fascinating as it delved into both obvious propaganda and the more subtle kind found in most films of the era. There’s a fallout shelter playing emergency radio messages of the era. There’s an entire section devoted to General Curtis E. LeMay, the “father of SAC.” There’s even a little café with some really good burgers. Plus, there’s so many more aircraft to talk about.
Overall it was a day well spent. Getting to look at some of my favorite bombers that closely was well worth it. That may have been my first time there, but it certainly won’t be the last!
