Our next stop along our trip was the Air Museum just outside the gate at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City, South Dakota. For those of you that might travel there in the future in a BIG RV, you might want to call ahead like we did to see if there is room to maneuver and park in their parking lot.
We are in a 45' motorhome towing a Honda CR-V and we are pretty long and wide. The nice lady we talked to before we arrived suggested we come straight into the parking lot and head straight toward the building. Then, right in front of the building is a roundabout that let us reverse direction and then park next to the B-29.
When we got to the museum, what we found out is that the roadway outside the museum gates is narrow and so is the entrance gate and we had to wait for oncoming traffic to pass before we were able to swing wide and enter the narrow gate straight on.
We followed the path of the yellow line I placed on the following picture and parked at the red circle and it worked out great.
The museum had lots of interesting displays and we learned about something we had never heard of. They took a big balloon and suspended a ball under it and let it go This model shows what it must have looked like.
Imagine what it would be like trying to get out as it is falling from 66,000 feet.
One of the interesting displays they had was an actual B1 bomber cockpit that was used as a simulator. It would allow entire flight crews to simulate a mission from engine start through an attack mission, and finally an approach and landing.
They must've had to spend hours in the simulator in order to complete an entire mission. This is the pilot and copilot crew position.
The simulator must be a very cost-effective way to train crews for the B1 bomber, because they are immense and must cost a fortune to fly and maintain.
They also had a mock up of what the control room of an underground missile silo would look like. The two operators seats were separated by quite a distance, and the principle was that the only way to fire a missile was to turn two keys at the same time, and the keys were too far apart for one person to do it.
It kept one crazy person from firing the whole works, but I'm not sure how they could make sure they didn't have two crazy people down there at the same time. Apparently their system worked because I don't think we've had any unauthorized launches.
There were a total of 150 underground missile complexes located in South Dakota and another 150 located in North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. They have deactivated all of the South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming sites, but the North Dakota sites are still active.
I would have loved to be at Mount Rushmore on the day that this happened!
They had lots of beautiful static displays outside, and even though we had seen many of these types before, it is always amazing to see it again, and remember all of the people that built, maintained and flew these things.
This is a B-29 bomber, similar to the Enola Gay which is the bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. It is huge.
It makes our huge motorhome look small.
We let the pictures do most of the talking on this episode. It was a very nicely done museum and now we are heading out to Hermosa, South Dakota to continue our explorations.
We will keep you posted on our adventures and we hope you get a chance to get out and do some exploring too.
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