The National World War II Museum

I initially visited the World War II Museum in January of this year on the recommendation of a college friend that is in the air force. My first visit left my impressed by how much there was to learn at the museum and that after a four hour afternoon of touring the exhibits, I had not come close to seeing everything!

In high school, I took A.P. U.S. History and felt pretty confident about my WWII knowledge going into the museum, but I was constantly discovering new facts about the war with each exhibit. For some reason my high school history books failed to mention the role that Hollywood played in winning the war with regards to building sets and inflatable trucks to make it look like the allies were gearing up for an a D-Day invasion in France on a different coast than Normandy based on "false artillery and troop build up." Other details that were absent from my AP classes were that dolls were dropped with the paratroopers with audio recordings of gun fire attached to them to make the number of paratroopers look larger than there actually were! Additionally, I had no idea that there were so many D-Days on the Pacific front.

This museum is phenomenal - rarely use that word, if ever!

As I mentioned, I was unable to see everything at the museum on my first visit in January and knew that I would need to go back. I decided to make my second trip to the museum after the opening of their new Victory Complex in October. Saturday afternoon, my friends and I went back to the WWII Museum to check out the new complex and see the rest of the museum that we missed on our initial visits.

Saturday afternoon, we began our trip to the museum at the new Victory complex by purchasing the combo museum entry and 4-D Beyond All Boundaries in the Victory Theater (http://nationalww2museum.org/victory-theater/). The three of us had some time to kill before the movie started, so we decided to get a drink at the John Besh Restaurant at the museum, The American Sector (http://nationalww2museum.org/american-sector/. None of us were hungry, but we were thirsty and ordered sodas! The bartender served them in a giant vat whose nozzle had to be suppressed to infuse the soda with CO2. It was totally worth the visit! We weren't hungry and did not try the food, but it looked delicious!

The 4-D Beyond All Boundaries in the Victory Theater was spectacular! Tom Hanks narrated the movie, that resembled a ride at Disney World, with the seats vibrating when the audience was place in the seat of an airplane cockpit and inside a tank. Definitely sit in row five or higher to avoid being snowed on! (Our bartender at the John Besh restaurant recommended rows five through eight as the best ones to site and he was right.)

After the movie we began our tour of the museum. If you go to the museum, definitely start your visit with the 4-D movie!

http://nationalww2museum.org/

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