Tone wrote this late at night 2077 days ago:
Our first sight of the Duxford War Museum was that of a BAC TSR-2. This was a prototype aircraft that never went into production. It was a funny looking thing with wings that hardly looked big enough to get it into the air. Next to that was an Avro Vulcan - a big delta wing bomber from the 1950’s. We then turned to one of the original Concorde test aircraft. It was open so we had a look through it. It packed was full of test gear and was still in original condition. It even had escape shutes for the crew to abandon the aircraft while in flight.
After the Concorde, we made our way along to the first hangar. This hangar contained a collection of World War II era aircraft and included numerous Spitfire versions, Hurricanes and Mustangs.
Next was the Naval Warfare Collection. Outside the hangar was a few naval aircraft including a Royal Navy F4 Phantom and Sea Vixen. Inside the hangar was a range of different helicopters, including a Westland Wessex and Wasp as well as a Russian MI-24 Hind (not a naval heli but still cool). There was a section devoted to the British mini Submariners who had a big impact in the wars.
As we left the Naval Collection, we looked around the aircraft that were on display outside. There was a range of different military and civilian aircraft here. There was a BAC Lightning, Panavia Tornado, Handley Page Victor and the only flying B17 in Europe. A few of the civilian aircraft were the BAC Comet and a Trident.
The next hangar was devoted to the Battle of Britain aircraft. There was a load of different fighters including Spitfires and Hurricanes, but the highlight was a fully restored Lancaster bomber. There was an interesting documentary about the role that Duxford played in WWII and another one about general air combat in the war.
Outside of this hanger was a F15 which is one of my favourite aircraft. We had a good look at this before entering the American Air Museum. This hangar was packed full of great aircraft, including a F1-11, F4, F100 Super Sabre, U2, A10, P47, B24 and B29. The best though were the SR71 Blackbird and B52 Stratofortress. The B52 was so big that I couldn’t get a decent picture of it from inside the building. I climbed into the undercarriage for a look and had a good look through the cockpit windows. The Blackbird was also amazing. It had the Turbojet engines out on display. They weren’t as big as I had imagined considering the speeds the aircraft could do.
This hangar was my favourite, considering that it held a lot of the aircraft that I used to have as models when I was younger.
The final section was devoted to land warfare. It contained a lot of equipment ranging from the World War 1 to the current day. It was really well set out and gave a good impression of the landscape of the war with demolished buildings built around the tank displays.
After 5 hours of walking around looking at this stuff we were both exhausted. We made our way to the exit after grabbing a “99″ icecream from an ice-cream van.
Filed under: Travel, United Kingdom
