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  • Bob Hope: 50 Years of Hope

    Note: This exhibit in part, will be relocated to the Southeast Asia War Gallery.For more than 50 years, Bob Hope entertained men and women of the U.S. Air Force and the other services at home and overseas, in peace and in war. At least 10,000,000 G.I.s benefited from his efforts, and the United

  • Birth of Jet Aircraft

    The Korean War served as the arena for history's first air-to-air combat by jet-propelled aircraft. U.S. Air Force pilots did not start scoring heavily against Russian-made MiG-15 jets until the swept-wing F-86A Sabre arrived in Korea in late 1950. Then the victories began to mount, and by the end

  • B-26 Invader in Korea

    "Dear Sis ... The Commies have .50 caliber machine guns, 20 mm, 40 mm, 85 mm, and 105 mm anti-aircraft guns and some son-of-a-b**** with a rifle shot us down ... I don't reckon you need to tell mom about my hairy story."- Letter written home by Lt. Charles Hinton on Jan. 8, 1952The World War II-era

  • Bomber Crewman

    Communist anti-aircraft guns sometimes forced B-29 crews to altitudes above 20,000 feet. At this height, the temperature dropped to well below zero degrees Fahrenheit and crews needed warm clothing for protection. Many wore the same flight clothing that their counterparts did in World War II. Some

  • Browning M3 Machine Gun

    Bore: .50-cal. (12.7mm)Muzzle velocity: 2,870 feet per secondRate of fire: 1,250 rounds per minuteBullet weight: 1.7 oz. (49 grams)Gun weight: 65 lbs.Click here to return to the Korean War Gallery.

  • B-29 Walk-through Fuselage

    Note: Visitors are permitted to walk through this aircraft.Command Decision was a 28th Bomb Squadron, 19th Bomb Group B-29 that became famous for shooting down five MiG-15s, unofficially making it a bomber "ace." It was named after a popular 1948 film about the difficult decisions and heavy

  • Bombing as a Manpower Problem

    The Norden bombsight served as the U.S. Army Air Forces' primary high-altitude visual bombsight during World War II. In 1939 a journalist exaggerated its accuracy with the claim that it could "drop a bomb in a pickle barrel from 18,000 feet." The claim was exaggerated, but unprecedented accuracy was

  • Bombing as a Technical Problem

    For the USAAF's doctrine of daylight precision bombing to succeed, a bombsight had to solve three technical problems. First, a bombardier had to use a complex formula that accounted for true air speed, gravity, air resistance and wind. Since making all these computations in combat would be almost

  • Bombing as a Mathematical Problem

    Until it is released, a bomb travels through the air with the same forward velocity as the airplane, and this velocity relative to the air is called true air speed. The instant the bomb is released, four factors act on it: 1) true air speed; 2) gravity; 3) air resistance; and 4) wind. Calculating

  • Battle of the Bulge

    Early on Dec. 16, 1944, the Germans began their large-scale counteroffensive in the Ardennes. During the first seven days, fog, clouds and snow seriously limited Allied air power, and by Dec. 24 the Germans had penetrated 50 miles westward. The weather let up and both Allied and German air power