Florida: National Naval Aviation Museum

We did not, in fact, spend all of our time in Florida at the beach or in a restaurant. We did manage to get out to Pensacola one Saturday and visit the National Naval Aviation Museum. I think we were all expecting something a little smaller. They managed to squeeze a very large number of airplanes into that place!

Some of you may know that Pensacola is the home of the Navy's Blue Angels. It becomes fairly obvious as you drive around the town as there is Blue Angel stuff everywhere. Of course, the Naval Aviation Museum had some of their old planes displayed. I think they're F-18s?

I do enjoy looking at the cool military aircraft, but actually my favorite displays at the museum were the historical items. They have lots of old draft cards and certificates and stuff like that. I found the vintage recruiting posters to be quite intriguing.

The museum seemed to start with World War I, and then moved forward through most of the major wars. They did have a few Japanese planes from World War II. It was very cool to see these planes with the big red rising sun of Japan on their wings, just like I've seen in all the war movies my dad used to watch.

The museum was very cool, and I highly recommend it to anyone else traveling around that area. I leave you, loyal readers, to ponder that along with this photograph of the one thing that made me giggle in the entire museum.