Air Force Memorial: Soaring to the heavens
No other memorial quite touches the human spirit with such a simple design as the Air Force Memorial. Its three singular lines soar towards the sky – the heavens, specifically – in honor of all those who served and died with the U.S. Air Force and its predecessors. The memorial can be seen among the Washington skyline facing Northern Virginia.
Dedicated in 2006, the Air Force Memorial was created to honor the more than 54,000 military personnel who died while serving on the U.S. Air Force and its predecessors: the Aeronautical and Aviation sections of the U.S. Signal Corps, the Division of Military Aeronautics for the Secretary of War, the Army Air Service, the U.S. Army Air Corps, and the U.S. Army Air Forces. The memorial is located on a promontory by the Pentagon and next to Arlington Cemetery.
The memorial was originally slated to be situated near the United States Marine Corps Memorial (Iwo Jima), but caused controversy when Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-NY), a former Marine, introduced a bill forbidding any other memorial to be built within view of Iwo Jima. The memorial site was moved to Fort Meyer, south of Arlington Cemetery.
The memorial was designed by James Ingo Freed, who designed the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The stainless-steel structure is a set of three bending lines ranging from 201 feet to 270 feet high, veering up into the sky and away from each other. They represent the “bomb burst” created by Air Force Thunderbirds, leaving a trail of white smoke, tapering off at the tip of their flight. Typically, four planes will create the “bomb burst” except in an Air Force funeral fly-over where the “missing man” formation of three will create the image.
Four eight-foot tall bronze statues stand in guard formation by before the inscription wall. They represent the Memorial's Honor Guard, sculpted by Zenos Frudakis. There are two inscription walls in shiny granite; one includes the names of Air Force recipients of the Medal of Honor and the other bears quotations of the Air Force's three core values: “integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do.”
Posted by Rin-rin Yu
