Strategic Air Command

Started: 2026-01-08 19:49:55

Submitted: 2026-01-08 21:54:18

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Visiting the Strategic Air and Space museum after Christmas

On Boxing Day we visited the Strategic Air and Space Museum half-way between Lincoln and Omaha. (Kiesa slept poorly on the weird bedding at our Airbnb so she stayed behind to take a nap. Airbnb bedding has high variance with a low average quality; this one was especially bad, with a lumpy pillow-top and terrible pillows. Kiesa brought her own pillow from home, which turns out to have been a good idea, but I was anxious about our luggage space for the entire trip.)

The day dawned bright and sunny, leaving me to conclude that today was the actual day of the unconquered sun this year, since Christmas Day was overcast.

It turns out that I had already visited this museum this year, when I came to visit Willy in Lincoln at the beginning of the summer, but I neglected to post any of my pictures. (I figured my kids would appreciate the aircraft in the museum so I could justify a second visit within a year.) Some of the aircraft had moved, but most were in the same place, including the SR-71 Blackbird in the entry atrium, posed dramatically to give us a good view of the record-holding plane from above.

Since my last visit the F-117A had been moved out of the restoration hangar into the main hangar, displacing a few other aircraft to make room for it. We could walk all the way around the plane and see the features that were supposed to reduce the plane's radar signature, including the irregular angles on all of the ports and a radar-reducing matte black covering (that made the plane hard to photograph in the darkened hangar).

In the middle of the hangar was one plane still in service: the B-52. My impression from my last visit, from looking at dates on the various planes in the main hangar, was that the Air Force banged out a new bomber just about every year after the end of the Second World War, trying new technologies as they evolved (from piston-powered propellers to jet engines) until they got to the B-52 then they declared victory and stopped. Under the bomber's wing was a two-seat cockpit trainer; I happened by the trainer at just the right moment to see Calvin and Julian sitting inside as if to prepare their plane for takeoff.

Some of the controls were obvious: the control yoke and the eight separate throttle levers for the eight jet engines mounted in pods under the wings. There was a big grid of dials reporting information from each of the eight engines in the middle of the cockpit between the pilots. But most of the cockpit was inscrutable to me. I kind of wanted an interactive trainer that would walk me through an engine start and takeoff, highlighting each control as I needed to use it to power up this hulking Cold War relic.

The other large bomber in the main hangar, positioned just behind the B-52, was a B-36. This was a weird hybrid bomber, with six massive propellers pushing from behind the wing and four extra jet engines mounted in pods of two under each wing, as if it were the evolutionary missing link between propeller and jet aircraft.

One of the interesting design features of the B-36 was a tube connecting the forward cabin (including the cockpit) to the aft cabin (including a crew rest area and tail gun). This tube passed along the side of the main bomb bay; and because the aircraft would fly at high altitude the tube was pressurized and the bomb bay was not. The plane's bomb bays were open so we could walk under and look into the bays that would have rained down death and destruction and see the tube nestled along the side of the fuselage. The museum had replicated the tube on the ground, using plastic pipe two feet in diameter with a sled on wheels running the length of the tube. Museum visitors could lie down on the tube and pull themselves through using the rope mounted to the top of the tube. The last time I visited this exhibit was mobbed by children attending the museum's summer camp; but this time I got the chance to try it out. I laid on my back on the sled and pulled myself through the tube to the other end. It was weird but also fun.

The far side of the hangar had an exhibit on nuclear ICBMs (the second leg of the nuclear triad, along with the B-52 in the middle of the hangar). A mezzanine above the hangar had a desk from an Undisclosed Location (when the president headed to Offutt Air Force Base on September 11) and an exhibit on U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers getting shot down over the Soviet Union, complete with a U2 hanging from the ceiling of the hangar as if in flight.

We stopped for lunch at the museum cafe and headed into the smaller Hangar B, with a more eclectic selection of aircraft. There was a B-29 and a diorama showing the layout of wartime factories building B-29s in Omaha, showing the planes starting with the construction of the main fuselage then attaching wings and engines and tail and finally rolling out the open doors of the factory onto the runway.

I was fascinated by the fully restored (but with its wings removed, so it would actually fit inside the hangar) EC-135 Looking Glass, intended as an airborne command post to maintain continuity in the event of a nuclear attack. These aircraft stayed aloft during the Cold War, just in case they were needed. This particular plane sat outside for years before being towed inside and restored.

In between a C-47 and an exhibit about the Berlin Airlift was a small display case showing artifacts owned by Ed Mauser, an Airborne soldier and one of the Band of Brothers who lived in Omaha. The plaque commemorated the 101st Airborne's defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge and included the quote "Nuts!"

From Hangar B we could look into the restoration hangar and see a Vulcan, donated to the museum by the UK government ("Years in SAC service: None" noted the sign); it looked like the plane was getting its paint stripped to prepare it to find its place elsewhere in the museum.

Calvin posed in front of a MiG-23 sticking out of the restoration hangar. This aircraft was missing a sign or any interpretive information; I only identified the model of the plane using the museum map. It wasn't clear how this plane came to be in the museum's collection.

We made the obligatory exit via the gift shop (but I was too worried about my luggage to buy anything). I noticed the selection of plastic model kits and realized my children have not had the experience assembling a model kit, so I need to rectify this. Then I saw a hat and other schwag with the slogan "Peace is our Profession" and this gave me the chance to point this out to my kids and to have a discussion about what this really meant: everything we saw today was designed to strike first, or retaliate with nuclear weapons in a devastating war. In theory this was about strategic deterrence; but this depended heavily on everyone agreeing to the same game theory grid indicating that a first strike would be futile. I guess it worked out in our timeline but at no point was that guaranteed.

We walked out past an Atlas ICBM after four hours steeping in Cold War history, through the lens of the Strategic Air Command and its paradoxical mission to enforce peace by preparing for war.