The recently unveiled Air Force Memorial seems to me to miss the point of memorializing its people. The tall columns stretching upward remind me of Albert Speer’s famed searchlights which created shimmering columns around the Nuremburg Rallies. These are not columns of smoke from descended tailfins, rather they are vapor trails upward. They are inspiring of course, and if they represented PanAm or Nasa, they’d celebrate flight. But as this is for the US Air Force, they celebrate militancy. As a memorial, they celebrate death.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
Anti-war activists are never going to approve of a military war memorial of any type. In this case, rather than celebrating death, the memorial celebrates military superiority and American freedom.
The architect, ironically named James Ingo Freed, has said that the three stainless steel spires that soar skyward represent flight and the flying spirit of the USAF. The spires pay homage to aviation pioneers and to the venerable AF Thunderbirds performing the very precise “bomb blast” maneuver.
The three spires also represent the three core values of the USAF: integrity, self sacrifice, excellence.
They evoke the three sub-core values of the AF: date rape, academic dishonesty, and crappy football.
I think it’s a very fitting tribute.