The U.S.A.F files.

I'm writing this from a car park outside another obliging Home Depot, and it'll be published via their free wi-fi. Don't you just love technology?

But I'm not sure what to think about the technology we've seen in the last two days.

This pigeon was a flying hero, delivering his message despite losing a leg in battle.

We've spent them both in a museum. Not just any museum. This is a big museum. in fact this is the biggest military aircraft museum in the world. So this museum needed time. We thought a  seven hour day would do it, but no. It took around fourteen hours to even start to do it justice. The collection is staggering in its scope - from a one legged pigeon to intercontinental ballistic missiles.

This flying saucer only went a few feet up, and was too unstable to fly.

The inventors didn't think of using it as a hovercraft.

A real WWII V2 rocket engine.

It's the National Museum of the United States Air Force. It has exhibits which I never believed I'd see, such as WWII German fighter jets, or a V2 rocket engine. There's an Apollo Command Module which circled the moon, and decommissioned atomic bombs.

A real WII German jet fighter.

There's a whole collection of Presidential Aircraft, including the one which flew Kennedy's body back to Washington after his assassination, Jackie keeping vigil opposite. It's also where L.B.J was sworn in as President.

Kennedy's coffin wasn't put in the hold apparently - the bulkhead on the left was cut away so that it could be placed in the passenger compartment. Jackie sat next to it on the right.

The plane that took Roosevelt to Yalta to meet Churchill and Stalin is there, showing the specially made lift that enabled him to board in his wheelchair. (He'd contracted polio in 1921, and was paralysed from the waist down.)

Roosevelt could be lifted up into his plane whilst still in his wheelchair.

The exhibits give so much to ponder. The plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki is there. Roosevelt made that decision. Was it the right one? What would the casualties on both sides have been if Japan had to be defended against an orthodox Allied attack?

This plane dropped the bomb that obliterated Nagasaki.

The yellow atomic bomb casing.

There was a phalanx of intercontinental ballistic missiles. Are they weapons that should never have been invented, or are they responsible for the fact that I've never been called upon to fight in the third world war?

The latest models are still sitting in their silos around America, ready to go.

There are numerous examples of heroism; men giving their lives to save comrades in mortal danger - also men risking their lives spraying Agent Orange across the forests of Vietnam. The video testimony of American P.O.W.s describing the torture endured at the hands of the Vietcong shows what they were up against. It was a brutal war.

Diane gives scale to a cold war bomber.

And then there are the incredible personal stories. Eugene Jacques Bullard left his American home aged eleven, to travel the world. He landed in Scotland, fought as a boxer, and after a holiday in Paris enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. He later became a pilot in the French Air Force during WWI. This was around the turn of the last century. His life was the stuff of legends. I recommend you look it up on Wikipedia and be inspired:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Bullard

There's so much to digest after a visit to this place. I didn't know that the U.S. was sending spy satellites up which took photographs on film. This was then ejected from the space craft and sent back to Earth, to be collected in mid air as it parachuted down to the Pacific Ocean. This was fifty years ago when I was a young lad. What can they do now that they're keeping very secret?

This has been round the moon a few times.

It was chilling to see the nuclear bomb cases on display. I've grown up with the thought of these weapons - I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. I was only a young lad, but I remember wondering if the sky would look red in the morning if all the bombs went off. The first thing I did on waking was peep through the curtains. I still recall the feeling of great relief.

Which thermonuclear bomb for today, sir?

To see the real thing in front of me all these years later is somewhat unnerving. it brings those feelings back. (If you've never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis look it up on Wikipedia. It's reckoned that if things worked out differently, around 200 million people might have died.)

A stealth fighter - science fiction as fact.

And then there are the achievements of the people who created all this stuff. The ideas, research, development and testing which has brought flight from the Wright brothers to supersonic jets in around one long lifetime. There are people on this planet who were children when powered flight was still an interesting novelty.

I remember some nuclear bombs being lost in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain when a plane crashed. I think they got them back.

The statistics given are almost unbelievable: over 7 million tons of bombs were dropped by the US during the Vietnam War. (During WW2 it was around 2 million.)

A Mig fighter.

But then I met an eighty-six year old Dutchman who, as a ten year old boy, remembered the Nazis forcing a Jewish family out of their family bakery. He knew at first hand what is at stake when a country can't defend itself, and loses its liberty.

So yes, most of the exhibits are about war machines - but then do they defend the peace?

This collection is huge, both in number and size.

Two whole days walking the enormous hangers that house the museum still leaves plenty unseen, but it also leaves plenty of questions that I still don't have the answer to.

If you want a look at it it's here:

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/