Today we were at Duxford air museum, which is part of the Imperial War Museum in Cambridgeshire. Last year we bought my dad a trip in a Tiger Moth biplane with Classic Wings. Today was his time to fly.
This was just after he landed after his half hour flight. He really enjoyed it and we were lucky with the weather. Just after this it started to rain and I am not sure they did any more trips. He was able to buy a video of the flight recorded from a camera just above his head. They do charge a fair bit for that, but it is a nice reminder of the experience. The plane may be a similar age to him as he was born just before the war. It still seems to be flying well.
I had not been to Duxford for a long time even though it is not too far from us. It was a wartime airfield and is still used by various small planes that were lined up there as well as these flight experiences.
They have a row of passenger planes by the airfield. Unfortunately they were all closed to the public today.
This little one did thousands of flights between some of the Channel Islands. Each flight was less than twenty miles, but would have been much quicker than a boat.
There are a series of hangars with various planes and other exhibits. My parents were not up for the long walks between them, so we just went around the one near the entrance.
This Handley Page Victor was built to drop nuclear weapons. They have the larger Vulcan next door and you can stand right under its bomb bay.
Next door is a space filled with various planes. This was taken after I had just been in the Comet which was one of the first jet airliners. It is a pretty plane, but they had some crashes due to stress fractures.
You would not want to be standing here when Concorde fired up its massive engines. I am sure this one was outside on my last visit. It was used for testing and is full of various equipment and masses of cables rather than seats. I never flew on Concorde, but I experienced the noise of them flying into London's Heathrow Airport and I saw several fly there for the final time when they ceased operations. One did crash in France, but that was due to debris from the runway rather than a fault. They were really too expensive to be viable.
This is part of a plane flown by senior Nazi Rudolph Hess who wanted to attempt to make peace with some British leaders in 1941. He ended up as the only prisoner in Spandau Prison until he hanged himself in 1987.
You could easily spend all day at the museum and I will probably return. The engineering aspects of planes fascinate me. Some people will be into the war stuff, but there is much more than that here.
I too have walked beneath a Vulcan and it’s a fabulous aircraft. We saw it quite often when we used to live in Farnborough. Thanks to the air show back in its heyday.
I have seen one fly over when we were driving somewhere. My grandfather worked on some of these planes with the RAE and was even involved in the Manchester United crash investigation. He took me around the Hendon museum when I was a kid. My mum worked in the RAE drawing office, so she has some links to the planes too. My dad was in the merchant navy, but knows a fair bit about planes.
I have some cine film of old Farnborough shows from my grandfather. I may look at digitising that some time.
How interesting, a number of people we know used to work at the RAE, many in their old age now. I remember watching the show from the hill next to the canal long before they started to prevent people from doing so. We even had a lift in an army jeep one hot summer because mum was struggling with my little brother (now 6.2ft) in a pushchair across the rough terrain of Aldershot common.
Do share the film if you’re able to. That will be very interesting.
I hope to write some history posts on here.
My dad has some photos that could be interesting. I'll have a chat with him about those. My mum recently gave me this badge that belonged to her dad.
That's in good condition too, the colours have not faded.
Very cool! My wife and I are taking a trip this summer and I think it is going to take us out by an airfield/museum. We might have to stop and check it out. I haven't been to anything like this since I was in Washington DC.
This is probably one of the best in the UK. There is a nice little one near us where they actually fly a lot of the planes. We see some fly over our garden. It's cool when you can go into the planes.
Yeah, that would be cool to be able to sit inside some of them.
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I’ve never moved very close to an aero plane before, lol
That’s because I’ve never needed to travel by air but I hope I do that someday
Well I hope you do. I've flown dozens of times.
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