Palm Springs Air Museum

Next to the airport is the Palm Springs Air Museum, which is home to many WWII relics........ planes, motorcycles, helicopters and other memorabilia. 

We were able to go inside of this B17 Bomber/Fighter plane!  Fascinating!  The bottom right photo shows the gunner pop-out on the top of this massive plane, that held two gunners.

The nose of the plane had room for two gunners to operate from. 

Under the belly of the plane there was a rotating ball that one gunner squeezed into to shoot from. 

The ammunition in the bottom left picture loads automatically from a ammo box that housed 9 yards of bullets that fed into the guns.  When the gun operator asked for more ammunition, he always received "the whole 9 yards", supposedly where this idiom came from!   The B17 was one amazing shooting machine!

Plane that carried the paratroopers. 

Helicopters 

Motorcycles

 Riveter.  Misspelled, sorry :-S

 We watched a movie about the WASP's, or Women Airforce Service Pilots, that was quite interesting!  This was the symbol for that branch of women, though they were never recognized as true military personnel until long after the war was over.  One very intriguing thing we heard was that one of their duties was to fly in a small plane with a banner trailing 30 feet behind them for the sole purpose of target practice for the infantry personnel !  Their planes were hit time and again, but since women were literally dubbed 'inconsequentail' to the war effort, no one was concerned.  So much for all those Rosie the Riveters as well!  Inconsequential, my foot!  Mostly the job of these women was to deliver all of the different planes as they were built to wherever they were needed, oversees or on US turf.  Check out this link for more interesting information on the WASP's!