Veterans Memorial: Choppers and a Tank

Merritt Island, Florida

The Brevard Veterans Memorial Center consists of two attractions: an outdoor display of military hardware and monuments, and an indoor museum.

Outdoors, visitors can wander among Vietnam-era helicopters on poles, a grounded Navy jet and Army tank, and a K-9 memorial topped with a sculpted dog -- and there's plenty of room for future hardware. The adjacent museum has a gift shop and two floors of exhibits. There are several dozen dummies dressed in uniforms, and artifacts, some of them bullet-ridden, from every USA war stretching from the American Revolution to the War of Terror.

Special sections are devoted to, among others, women in the military, the Merchant marine, MPs, and military chaplains. And, given the museum's proximity to Cape Canaveral, there's even a small NASA exhibit, with models of the Space Shuttle and Apollo moon capsule.