After mass, Rosemary and I said goodbye, and I started the drive south on I75. I decided to stop in Dayton Ohio at the Air Force museum. This is a very large museum, with several hangars, containing aircraft and artifacts from the early days of aviation up to the current day. There was a hangar showing ballistic missles, an interesting exhibit on the Berlin airlift, and even a section devoted to the Holocaust, with emphasis on allied airmen who were put into the camps, along with the Jews. I was able to walk quickly through the entire museum, but walked by most of the information panels without attempting to read them; I could imagine a real airplane or history buff spending days looking at aircraft and exhibits.
In some ways, the most interesting exhibit was the "Bockscar" B29 and the "Fat Boy" nuclear bomb which was dropped on Nagasaki Japan. The side panel explained that "The Japanese army retained sufficient strength to make an invasion extremely costly. Military advisors to president Truman estimated that an invasion of Japan would result in 250,000 to one million American casualties, and an equal number of the enemy. Fortunately for the people of all the nations involved, this inestimable carnage was not necessary. On July 26, 1945, the Allies issued the Potsdam declaration calling for Japan's surrender. Two days later, the Japanese Premier announced to the Japanese press that his government would ignore the ultimatum. Based on this apparent rejection of peace efforts, and the desire to avoid invading Japan, President Truman gave the order to employ a new weapon of mass destruction the atomic bomb." I have read that the exhibit at the Smithsonian does not attempt to explain the rationale or why the US made the decision to drop the bombs on Japan; I have not seen that exhibit.
I arrived in Louisville after dark, and chatted with Mater for a while, mostly discussing the upcoming repairs needed to the house.
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