It’s an incredible facility. Over the decades it has brought thousands of great people to the Omaha metro area—including my brother-in-law and my youngest son’s father-in-law. Thousands of upstanding people from all over the country have retired in the area. In the early 40’s the Martin Aircraft Company built an enormous factory for production of the B-26 Martin Marauder and the B-29 Superfortress. The B-29’s produced there were superior to those produced at any other plant in the country. Their quality was such that Colonel Tibbets came to Omaha to hand pick the planes that would bring WW2 to an end with the atomic bomb missions over Japan. My Mom left her position as a one-room schoolhouse teacher to work on the B-26’s there. That tremendous effort brought thousands of people to the area from all over the country.
I was born and raised in Omaha and enjoyed the annual Offutt Airshows along with the frequent sight of a vast array of Air Force planes in the skies over home. One of the most fascinating planes seen were the Vulcan bombers of the RAF which were frequently deployed to Offutt. In the late 50’s and early 60’s, Nike Hercules and Nike Zeus SAM missile bases ringed the Omaha area as Offutt was at the top of Soviet target lists. Of course they’re all long gone, but were a reminder of the critical role played by Offutt in the Cold War.
Offutt had a great Air Museum. It was relocated to site off of I-80 between Omaha and Lincoln and is a great destination for any military aviation enthusiast. Few military aviation museums can boast of the collection there. Restorations are ongoing and can often be viewed by visitors. It’s one of only a few museums with the remarkable RAF Vulcan, a B-1, and an SR-71.
My son, who was stationed at Warren AFB in Cheyenne, WY, manned some of the missile bases in western NE. It was a good job even though they were locked underground for 24 hour tours. They had their own chef and nice bunks, though. :)
Spent a year working on submissions for the new Statcom Mission Control. The stories I could tell — but won’t.
Not military here, but in a previous life, I was involved in a number of sort of “touch and go” adventures at some of the Road Trip installations showing up on the FReeper Canteen. Offett was one of those. My job there was later and I was not involved with a study assigned to the new Phd we hired after a few years of undergraduate employment with us. His first assignment as a permanent was to solve a mystery. He was to determine why the Airborne Command Stations would be occasional (seemingly random) victim of fire suppression dousing while hangered. Turned out to be an electromagnetic compatibility problem. It was against the rules for the maintenance people to turn on the plane’s high power transmitter(s) while in a hanger. But you know how rules are. In addition to responding to fire related phenomena (hopefully), the fire control electronics had an operation mode which caused it to respond in a similar manner to a large radio frequency signal.
I have not seen the museum and am probably too old and weak to make that expedition.
