Saturday, May 11, 2013

Udvar-Hazy trip

Since company was in town yesterday, a trip to the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Air and Space museum at Dulles Airport was in order. For those who have never been, it's hundreds of great aircraft shoe-horned into one huge hangar.

They've got pretty much everything in here, from an SR-71 (shown above) to this Wright Flyer (below) which I suspect is similar to the ones that Old NFO first crewed.


They have Warhawks and Corsairs,


Sabres and Huns.


They've got Phantoms,


and Tomcats,


Intruders,


And Thuds.

(Sorry, Ed. I meant to get better pictures of this D model.)

They've even got the Space Shuttle Discovery in here now, after 39 missions and a rather premature forced retirement, IMHO.



There's a P-38 Lightning, shown center, and behind it...

The B-29 Enola Gay, one of the two bombers that finally made the Japanese see the light and start to get reasonable back in 1945.

Here's a shot of the top of the Enola Gay, showing where the forward .50cal. machine gun turret used to be. I never realized that they took those off before her epic flight to save on weight and drag.


Here's a D-model Republic P-47.


And a positively drool-worthy ex-German FW-190.


They've even got the last surviving Arado 234b Blitz bomber, the first operational jet bomber, shown here with Rocket-Assisted Take-Off (RATO) pods mounted under the wings.


There will be more later, but for now, company's awake so I've got to go. See ya!

10 comments:

  1. I have so got to go there when the Nuke takes up her new assignment in DC. Great pics! Now I just have to get this drool off my keyboard...

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  2. The whole collection is drool-worthy, my friend. Thank you!

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  3. Were you on a private tour? There are no crowds! Or do they not let you get up next to them?

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  4. Yep, fantastic collection... WELL worth the trip!!!

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  5. @ Juvat: It was a Friday, so crowds were light, but yeah, they're also behind rails so you can't get right up on them.

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  6. That is too damned cool! Definitely checking it out if I'm ever over that way.

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  7. Nice! Makes we want to go. I have never been there. I also need to go back to Wright-Patterson sometime.

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  8. Don't go to the Air & Space museum when the school kids are on their spring break.

    Although I had been in Washington DC a couple of dozen times in the past 40 years my daughter had only visited when she was very young 20 something years ago.

    I took my daughter there a few years back at "break time" and we literally couldn't walk in the front doors with the huge crowds.

    So, since it was a nice day, we strode down to the "Wall" so I could visit with a few old buddies. On the way we stopped at the new WW-II memorial and the Korean War memorial. Then it was a hop on the metro to Arlington National cemetery.

    We were on sacred ground and we could feel it!

    I still get shivers when I think of that.

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