USS 'Bama
Well, I'm in Florida right now, visiting my dad. The drive was fairly fun - Mom and I chatted on the way up, mostly about Transformers but also about some other stuff. We stopped about halfway to Florida to visit the USS Alabama museum in Mobile Bay.
We got there pretty late, so we just wandered around and looked at the stuff outside. That was more than awesome in and of itself, as the museum normally has several planes outside on display, as well as assorted tanks and artillery pieces. The fun thing about going to this kind of place with someone who knows planes and military history is that they can tell you about when and what the planes were used for, and sometimes what they were designed for.
The B-52 was awesomely huge, though it was a bit too soggy on the ground underneath for me to want to get close enough to touch it. The one they had on display had been in service in Vietnam, and still had its night camouflage on it. It also had one and half lines of red bombs painted on the side, so the pilot had kept a tally.
The museum also had a fair amount of their planes out in a closed-off section, where we could look but not get very close. They were all pretty hurricane-damaged, though, which was a real shame. One side of the A-12 looked like it had been chewed on.
One of the planes there was a prototype SR-71, aka the A-12. Quite interesting, especially with Mom telling me some of the problems they discovered in testing. Like that the A-12 could outrun its own missiles. Gets a bit hairy when you're using heatseekers.
Made them real hard to launch, too.
Recognized some of the planes as Transformers, and Mom got subjected to such lines as, "I know someone who turns into that."
It amused me very much to read all of the stuff that's written on military equipment. Operator instructions, warnings for the support staff, "this here is what this is" type stuff...
This led to a bit of Aerialbot fluff.
---
"Warning: Cockpit release system equipped with an explosive charge. Warning: Seat ejection system equipped with an explosive charge. Do not step. Ground here. Do not stand in front of intake when engine is on..," Air Raid said, sounding like he was reading off of something.
Sunstreaker looked at Sideswipe like he was hearing things, and Sideswipe shrugged then pointed at the open door to the "Aerialbot lounge". It was originally one of the aft storage compartments of the Ark, but the Aerialbots had colonized it after they came along. It was sufficiently out of the way of the rest of the restored sections that most of the other Autobots didn't go back there and bug them... often.
The Lamborghini twins sauntered up to the open door and glanced inside. One, two, three, four, five Aerialbots dorking around. Silverbolt and Slingshot had some sort of shooter videogame up on the console, Skydive was showing Fireflight something with a set of Transformer-sized Legos, and Air Raid was reading- Well, it looked like he was reading Slingshot's back.
Sideswipe glanced at Sunstreaker and shrugged. The silly jets never made any sense anyway.
We got there pretty late, so we just wandered around and looked at the stuff outside. That was more than awesome in and of itself, as the museum normally has several planes outside on display, as well as assorted tanks and artillery pieces. The fun thing about going to this kind of place with someone who knows planes and military history is that they can tell you about when and what the planes were used for, and sometimes what they were designed for.
The B-52 was awesomely huge, though it was a bit too soggy on the ground underneath for me to want to get close enough to touch it. The one they had on display had been in service in Vietnam, and still had its night camouflage on it. It also had one and half lines of red bombs painted on the side, so the pilot had kept a tally.
The museum also had a fair amount of their planes out in a closed-off section, where we could look but not get very close. They were all pretty hurricane-damaged, though, which was a real shame. One side of the A-12 looked like it had been chewed on.
One of the planes there was a prototype SR-71, aka the A-12. Quite interesting, especially with Mom telling me some of the problems they discovered in testing. Like that the A-12 could outrun its own missiles. Gets a bit hairy when you're using heatseekers.
Made them real hard to launch, too.
Recognized some of the planes as Transformers, and Mom got subjected to such lines as, "I know someone who turns into that."
It amused me very much to read all of the stuff that's written on military equipment. Operator instructions, warnings for the support staff, "this here is what this is" type stuff...
This led to a bit of Aerialbot fluff.
---
"Warning: Cockpit release system equipped with an explosive charge. Warning: Seat ejection system equipped with an explosive charge. Do not step. Ground here. Do not stand in front of intake when engine is on..," Air Raid said, sounding like he was reading off of something.
Sunstreaker looked at Sideswipe like he was hearing things, and Sideswipe shrugged then pointed at the open door to the "Aerialbot lounge". It was originally one of the aft storage compartments of the Ark, but the Aerialbots had colonized it after they came along. It was sufficiently out of the way of the rest of the restored sections that most of the other Autobots didn't go back there and bug them... often.
The Lamborghini twins sauntered up to the open door and glanced inside. One, two, three, four, five Aerialbots dorking around. Silverbolt and Slingshot had some sort of shooter videogame up on the console, Skydive was showing Fireflight something with a set of Transformer-sized Legos, and Air Raid was reading- Well, it looked like he was reading Slingshot's back.
Sideswipe glanced at Sunstreaker and shrugged. The silly jets never made any sense anyway.