Trip to Washington D.C.

After a short family vacation to Washington D.C. it is time for that dreaded form of entertainment, the vacation slide-show!

I'll be nice and limit the photos to WWII-themed places I got shots of:


First comes the new WWII memorial on the Mall. My wife still thinks that it breaks-up the sight-line between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, but I feel it is a good addition.

While I had seen plenty of shots of the memorial, I had never noticed how it was designed to be handicapped and disabled friendly. Notice the gently curving ramps from the fountain level to the pavilions for each of the Theaters.

After visiting the Mall, we went out to the new Air & Space Museum Annex near Dulles Airport.
The star of this show, or at least the WWII section, is clearly the Enola Gay, the most well known delivery system for a WMD in the world. It was amazing to me how large and yet how small this bomber was in her shining aluminum.

And here's a little rarity, a Japanese balloon-bomb. It's the answer to the trivia question "What was the last military attack on the US mainland?" (I'm not counting 9/11 as military here).

And, the best thing about the Air & Space Annex? Room to grow. They're adding stuff all the time. That's my toddler daughter down at the end of the hanger in the space reserved for more flying wonders.

One Dead in Fight Over Bronze Soldier

If you thought the controversy over the WWII Memorial in D.C. got heated, be glad you don't live in Tallinn, Estonia.

Estonian officials are trying to move a Soviet-built WWII memorial and military grave complex out of the center of their capital city. Estonian nationalists say that 'Bronze Soldier' is a reminder of the Soviet conquest and occupation of the Baltic States in 1940 (and again in 1944). As in many parts of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, partisans stayed in the wild to battle the Red Army after harassing the Nazis for years. Ethnic Russians in Estonia feel that the memorial simply honors the soldiers who died to defeat Nazi Germany.

Excavations have begun to move the memorial and at least one man is dead in the subsequent protests and riots. The Russia's upper house of Parliament is calling for a break in diplomatic relations with Estonia. Even with the threats and the violence, it looks like the Bronze Soldier can expect to find a new home in a military cemetery outside the city.