{"id":3792,"date":"2013-10-24T00:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T05:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bismarck-mandan.com\/?p=3792"},"modified":"2016-06-13T00:46:55","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T05:46:55","slug":"cold-war-mancation-part-6-strategic-air-space-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/?p=3792","title":{"rendered":"Cold War Mancation, Part Six: Strategic Air & Space Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sac_museum_HDR_.28268-70\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you aren’t familiar with my Cold War Mancation series, don’t worry: I’ll provide some links for you to get caught up at the end of this post.\u00a0 My best friend and I took the opportunity last week to visit the Strategic Air and Space Museum (formerly the SAC Museum) in Ashland, Nebraska.\u00a0 We’d been talking about it seemingly forever, and finally made it happen thanks to some overtime and my gracious wife letting me bolt for a few days. To put it mildly, this trip was absolutely worth the wait.\u00a0 Let’s get started.<\/p>\n

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I’ll begin with a snarky comment.\u00a0 This is a Snark missile, the SM-62.\u00a0 It was an early cruise missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload to the Russkies, and it waits to greet you as you pull into the parking lot.<\/p>\n

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Zoom.\u00a0 Weapons and aircraft like this, deployed by the Strategic Air Command, are the focus of the museum.\u00a0 That means everything from bombs and missiles to rockets to bombers to…well, let’s just go inside.<\/p>\n

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This is what greets you in the lobby: an honest to goodness SR-71 Blackbird.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 Seeing one of these was on my bucket list.\u00a0 Touching one (yes, I leaned over the railing) wasn’t something I ever imagined possible.\u00a0 Yet, here we are.<\/p>\n

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Right off the bat I was astonished at how BIG this thing is.\u00a0 I’ve been enamored of this plane since the 1980s, and I thought I was reasonably familiar with its stats as a civilian fanboy, but until one of these things is perched diagonally above your head you will have absolutely ZERO comprehension of its girth.<\/p>\n

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This is how the SR-71 looked to Russian planes and missiles, although far less distant.\u00a0 If this thing flew past you at peak speed and you fired a 150 grain 30-06 bullet at it, it would still outrun the bullet by over 300 feet per second.\u00a0 As a former motorcycle roadracer I can appreciate that kind of speed.\u00a0 My puny 180mph seems rather insignificant by comparison.<\/p>\n

\"sac_museum_HDR_28342-4\"<\/a>One more thing on my bucket list: the Convair B-36 Peacemaker…the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever built.\u00a0 Note the three giant piston engines and rear-facing propellers on this wing…each blade is taller than I.\u00a0 Then we’ve got the pair of jet engines on the end of the wing for good measure.\u00a0 As the phrase goes, “Six turnin’, and four burnin’.”\u00a0 I was able to walk beneath this behemoth’s bomb bay without even ducking my head.\u00a0 These used to be based out of South Dakota.\u00a0\u00a0 Now they’re rare, and none fly.<\/p>\n

\"sac_museum_HDR_28316-18\"<\/a>Then we’ve got this beast: the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft.\u00a0 I have encountered one of these in flight before, and I must say it is by far the single loudest sound of any kind that I’ve ever heard.\u00a0 It was deceptively quiet until the pilot poured it on and shot up to over 70,000 feet.\u00a0 Even with my custom-made earplugs I was astonished at the noise.<\/p>\n

\"sac_museum_HDR_28517-9\"<\/a>Here’s a bright, shiny Soviet Mig-21 fighter jet.\u00a0 No need for paint, comrade.\u00a0 It was cool to see the Russian labels stamped into certain parts as well as the way they riveted the panels together.<\/p>\n

\"sac_museum_HDR_28457-9\"<\/a>In addition to some other really cool spacecraft and aircraft, this KC-97 Stratotanker was among the largest on display.\u00a0 As with the other big birds, it had an absolutely hilarious looking front end.\u00a0 It was also open for tours from time to time, so we got to go up and run around in it.<\/p>\n

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One other bird on my list was the B-58 Scrambler, a hardcore bomber that set a long list of speed records during its period of service.\u00a0 Later models had “capsules” for pilots to eject with, because apparently ejecting at supersonic speeds is bad<\/em> or something.\u00a0 Huh.<\/p>\n

\"sac_museum_28366\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I once made a record run from Dickinson to Bismarck (I won’t quote the time), but nothing like averaging over 900mph for the length of an average work day!\u00a0 This plane really knew how to rock ‘n’ roll.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Some of my favorite pics are just waiting, eager to be posted.\u00a0 They’ll come soon.\u00a0 In the mean time, I would like to share with you the previous iteration of our Cold War Mancation via the links below.<\/p>\n

Cold War Mancation Part One: The Ronald Reagan Minuteman Missile Site<\/a><\/p>\n

Cold War Mancation Part Two: Nekoma Missile Site, Mickelson Safeguard Complex<\/a><\/p>\n

Cold War Mancation Part Three: The Tower formerly known as OMEGA<\/a><\/p>\n

Cold War Mancation Part Four: Cavalier Air Station<\/a><\/p>\n

Cold War Mancation Part Five: Minot<\/a><\/p>\n

Bonus: The Cold War in North Dakota<\/a><\/p>\n

There.\u00a0 That should keep you entertained until I get around to posting some of the REALLY cool photos from the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you aren’t familiar with my Cold War Mancation series, don’t worry: I’ll provide some links for you to get caught up at the end of this post.\u00a0 My best friend and I took the opportunity last week to visit … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5090,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions\/5090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bismarckmandanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}