Wright Patterson AFB Museum: Memorial Gardens

Outside of the Museum at Wright Patt, there is a beautiful memorial garden. The sidewalks twist about like a maze; there isn't just one way to walk through. There are stones with memorial placards every few steps on the sidewalk, and in the center, a huge obelisk that chimes every quarter hour, with a different song playing on the halves. It is so serene, I simply cannot do it justice here, so I tried to capture a few things that caught my eye.

Next to the building is a statue to the Women's Airborne Service Pilots (WASP), a of female pilots who lived by military law, and trained the same as male pilots in the hope of being absorbed by the Army Air Corps. Instead, they were relegated to non-combat flights, and were not recognized as veterans, so when one died in service, they were buried without military honors, and the other WASPs even had to take up a collection to have the body shipped back home for burial.


Here is a memorial to the Mighty Eighth. Each side of the concrete post has a specific placard.


A memorial to the American Beagle Squadron.



The Tuskegee Airmen's memorial is dual sided, with a placard at the sidewalk, which I cut out of the pic...Oops!

This one wasn't in the gardens, but it is such an impressive sculpture I thought I would include it here. As soon as you step into the foyer of the Museum, you are greeted by a huge statue of Icarus with his wax wings.

Note the size of the folks in the background... The stone Icarus stands on is as tall as or taller than an adult man.