Ellsworth AFB-June 20, 2012

On our last day in this area, we decided to visit Ellsworth AFB and the museum there. It was well worth the trip. After walking the museum grounds and going through most of the museum we took a one hour tour of the base and a missle silo. We all had to be security checked. After we gave our information and got on the bus, we had to stop at an office by the gate for the security check to be conducted. After about 20 minutes the driver came back and asked a woman for her driver's license. I think everybody on that bus collectively held their breath as she stood up and pulled out her driver's license. This was after the driver had told us of felons being caught on his bus in the past. And recently a "dead" woman was on his bus. She had to go in and it took an hour to get that straightened out. Jerry said he had no idea half of our hour tour was going to be spent in the parking lot! As it turned out it was only a typo that caused this poor woman to be singled out. Note: we were not concerned since we had to have a security check before we got our driver's licenses here. We then went to a missle silo that has been decommissioned. The actual missle which used to have a nuclear warhead was still in the silo. It was a tad claustrophobic in that silo and it also had mold in it. But it was definitely interesting. We had so much information and so many facts thrown at us it will provide us with discussions for weeks to come. There were two planes at the museum that impressed us.

B-52 Bomber

B1 Bomber

The fact that really stuck in our feeble little minds is that on radar, the B1B as it is called, shows as being only 9 square feet in size. The rest of the massive plane does not show up. It can fly as low as 100 feet above the ground at supersonic speeds when it drops its bombs. Think about those numbers. That's really impressive. And one other interesting fact is that the drones in the middle east are being guided from this base. That is also very impressive. This was a delightful day full of lots of interesting things. And yes, as the clouds indicate, it did rain on us. Not a problem.