Must See Us Military Sites

By Author: Steve Robinson
Total Articles: 467
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Military buffs will be pleased to know that there are plenty of cheap travel options, including cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and sometimes even cheap vacation packages available to visit many impressive U.S. military sites.

Some of the more remarkable sites are:

• The Titan Missile museum near Tucson, Arizona is the world’s only remaining underground installation that houses an actual Titan II missile. While the missile is real, there no longer is a warhead attached. The Titan II carried the country’s most powerful nuclear warhead, equal to over 9 million tons of dynamite.

Through the 1960s into the 1980s there were over 50 Titan II launch sites spread across Arizona, Kansas, and Arkansas. An observation deck at the museum allows an impressive view of the entire rocket.

The museum’s floors were built separate from the walls so that the facility could survive giant shock waves from an earthquake and possibly even an enemy nuclear missile attack.

• Fredericksburg, Texas, is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War and where visitors can take in World ...
... War II battles brought back to life by volunteers. Spectacular pyrotechnics and authentic weapons are fired as a 10 minute battle is re-enacted where U.S. Marines capture a Japanese held beachhead. Viewers are given a true sense of the chaos of battle. Included in the re-enactment is a spectacular demonstration of a flamethrower wiping out pockets of enemy resistance.

• Paris Island in South Carolina annually puts on a spectacular graduation ceremony for hundreds of new Marines. Bands play, Marines march, and the commanding general speaks. Senior drill instructors dismiss their platoons and hundreds of new graduates shout “aye aye sir!” or “aye aye ma’am!”

• The aircraft carrier USS Midway is now a museum docked at the Navy Pier in San Diego. This was the longest (47 years) serving carrier of the 20th century. Over its active duty lifespan the Midway carried almost 200,000 sailors, at an average age of 19. Guests can climb into aircraft cockpits, sit in the captain’s chair, and lay down in a sailor’s bunk. In the brig one can see what it was really like to be confined to a jail cell aboard a Navy ship.

Walking on the flight deck and the bridge, the ship’s nerve center, visitors can imagine what it was like to launch one of the first strikes against Iraq at the beginning of 1991’s Operation Desert Storm.

Last November the Midway started testing untraveled waters by hosting a college basketball game. Syracuse University battled San Diego State University on a temporary court.
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