Ft Walton Beach, FL: Eglin AFB Air Force Armament Museum

On Wednesday we left Pensacola and started down to Panama City to see my cousin. On the way (well, a slight detour north into Ft Walton Beach), we stopped at the Air Force Armament Museum on Eglin Air Force Base.


It's completely free to get in and was pretty awesome.


Outside the museum are dozens of aircraft on display. Of particular interest to us was this one, the SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest jet-propelled airplane ever built.


We also saw one behind ropes at the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum in Virginia, but we could literally stand next to and touch this one. (I get the need for preservation of artifacts, but I wish more museums where exploration was encouraged! We really enjoyed all the museums we went to in Florida because they all allowed us to get up close to all sorts of things.)





There are lots of other airplanes, helicopters, and missiles outside too, completely surrounding the building. We only had about an hour to see everything here and it was not enough time.



Inside is worth seeing too. There are lots of bombs and bullets and things like that (it is an armament museum, after all), but the most interesting part was seeing the Fat Man nuclear bomb.




If you ever find yourself in the Panhandle or Forgotten Coast area of Florida and are interested in planes or military stuff at all, this is definitely worth checking out, especially since you can get so close to the planes (and it's free!).
Ft Walton Beach, FL: Eglin AFB Air Force Armament Museum Ft Walton Beach, FL: Eglin AFB Air Force Armament Museum Reviewed by Maria on 3:00:00 PM Rating: 5

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