Valparaiso, FL
Civilian access to Eglin Air Force Base — the largest air base in the world by land area (724 square miles, larger than Rhode Island). Eglin is the home of Air Force Materiel Command's armament and ordnance development; nearly every air-launched weapon in the U.S. inventory has been tested here. During WWII, Eglin became the focus of the most secret training program of 1942: Lt Col James Doolittle assembled 24 B-25 Mitchell crews here in March of that year to practice short-field carrier-style takeoffs (467 feet from a painted runway), low-altitude bombing, and Pacific overwater navigation — never told that their mission would be the April 18 raid on Tokyo from the deck of USS Hornet. The Air Force Armament Museum on the base displays an SR-71, B-17, B-52, F-105, and many of the weapons developed here. KVPS shares the runway with Eglin; commercial airline service runs from a separate terminal. Beautiful approach over the Choctawhatchee Bay and Gulf beaches.
On Eglin Air Force Base near KVPS. Free admission. Outdoor display includes an SR-71 Blackbird, B-17G Flying Fortress, B-52D Stratofortress, B-25 Mitchell, F-105 Thunderchief, F-15A Eagle, and an A-10 Warthog. Indoor exhibits cover the development of Air Force armament: every air-launched weapon from WWII to today, the Doolittle Raid (with a B-25 Mitchell mockup), the Son Tay POW raid (planned and rehearsed at Eglin in 1970), and the long history of Eglin as the proving ground for U.S. air-delivered weapons. The Doolittle gallery has training photos, original maps, and crew memorabilia from the 1942 mission practice on Eglin's auxiliary fields.
The most extensive naval aviation collection in the world — more than 150 aircraft on the ground and in flight, on the grounds of NAS Pensacola. The SBD Dauntless that helped sink the Japanese fleet at Midway hangs from the ceiling. Apollo 7 command module, NC-4 (first aircraft to cross the Atlantic, 1919), F-14 Tomcat, A-6 Intruder, Blue Angels A-4F, and the only surviving Curtiss Pusher trainer (1911). Free admission. The Cubi Bar Café inside recreates the Officers Club at NAS Cubi Point, Philippines — pilots have signed plaques on these walls for decades.
Naval Air Station Pensacola has been the home of US Navy flight training since 1914. During WWII, some 28,000 naval aviators earned their wings here — including a young George H.W. Bush, who became the Navy's youngest pilot at age 18. The base is home to the National Naval Aviation Museum, the world's largest naval aviation museum with over 150 restored aircraft. It's also home base of the Blue Angels. The museum and base are accessible by car after landing at KPNS, but from the air, the scale of the facility — hangars, runways, and seaplane ramps dating to WWI — tells the story of naval aviation's birthplace. The on-base National Naval Aviation Museum is the largest of its kind: 150-plus aircraft including the SBD Dauntless that helped turn Midway, the NC-4, an F-14, and a Blue Angels A-4; admission is free, and the Cubi Bar Cafe inside recreates the old Officers Club from NAS Cubi Point.
Downtown Montgomery, Alabama holds the densest concentration of Civil Rights Movement sites in the U.S. At the corner of Dexter Avenue and South Court Street, the Rosa Parks Museum stands at the bus-stop site where Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on December 1, 1955 — the act that launched the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott led by a 26-year-old new pastor named Martin Luther King Jr. Five blocks east on Dexter Avenue stands the brick Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where King preached his first sermon as pastor in 1954 and where the Montgomery Improvement Association (organizing the boycott) was founded. The Alabama State Capitol on the hill at the top of Dexter Avenue is where Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as Confederate President (February 18, 1861) AND where the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March ended — Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, opened the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice 1.5 miles south in 2018; the memorial holds 800 hanging steel columns inscribed with the names of 4,400+ documented lynching victims by county. The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where state troopers attacked marchers on "Bloody Sunday" March 7, 1965, is 47 miles west.