Still got the theme song from Top Gun stuck in you head after all these years? Do something about it.
Belly up to the bar at the transplanted Cubi Bar Café at Pensacola’s National Naval Aviation Museum, close your eyes and suspend disbelief. Blink, and you’re at the Cubi Point Officer’s Club in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. Around you are arrayed some of the best jet jockies of their time. On the walls are the pictures, plaques, and placards that attest to their true grit.
The whole bar – lock, stock and bar stools is transplanted these days at the National Naval Aviation Museum. Make it a required
way station in your exploration of this extraordinary collection of airplanes, artifacts and sacrifice. Sit in the cockpits of the jets these guys flew. ‘Fly’ a Top Gun simulator. Live the history of the Blue Angels, the Navy’s crack aerobatic team.
The Gulf too far to travel to get your flying fix? Next time you’re in Dayton carve out an afternoon and head to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, home of the National Museum of the United States Air Force. The place is suffused with the Right Stuff.
Sure, the jets are neat. But it’s the World War II gallery that is redolent of the Greatest Generation, those took to the skies in P-51s, B-17s, and B-24s to free a continent. It is also here, in Dayton, that you’ll also find John F. Kennedy’s VC-137C, SAM 26000. When JFK was on board, they called in Air Force One.
Billed as the world’s largest, and oldest, military aviation museum this is home to some 360 aerospace vehicles, missiles and such – as well as thousands of artifacts, photographs and documents. This is a world unto itself, a place where undiluted heroism and adventure are par for the course.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Image: National Naval Aviation Museum)
