By the time we were finished a Rabin Square, our bus had a new starter, and most of the luggage had been loaded from the substitute bus onto our bus. We left the hustle and bustle of Tel Aviv on a Sunday morning and headed toward the desert. Our first stop...the Israeli Air Force Museum outside of Beer Sheva.
The museum, adjacent to the training base for IAF pilots, has an indoor display and an outdoor display. The indoor display talks about the training, the equipment, the values and the history of the IAF. The outdoor section has a few planes that we could sit in, and dozens more that represent the history of Israel's military aviation hardware. We could see the progression in the technology and the relationship with the various foreign countries that have aviation industries, primarily France and the United States.
Our visit concluded by boarding the Boeing 707 that was used on the raid on Entebbe in July of 1976. On board (we at last had the chance to sit in first class) we watched a video about how the air force works and the values it seeks to promote. I found it fascinating that it has the highest ratio of enemy planes shot down to Israeli planes shot down in military aviation history.
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