Marg stayed home today due to having suffered a twisted kneecap yesterday - a result of being on hands and knees while painting cupboard shelves and getting up from there, awkwardly. Or something.
I decided to go to the Smithsonian Annex at Dulles Airport, otherwise known as the Steven F. Udvar Hazy Centre. Steven F. was a self made millionaire originally from Hungary, who donated some squillions to the Smithsonian so they could build and maintain an annex to house a unique variety of aircraft. I don't know how many aircraft are in this building, but a sample includes the Hiroshima B29 (Enola Gay), a Concorde, the space shuttle Enterprise and a myriad of other smaller planes.
I travelled to the Rosslyn station via the Metro and took the elevator from the underground Metro to the surface. It is incredibly long and quite steep, so most people hang on quite grimly, but other hardy souls (or those who can't imagine any consequences to their actions), run up or down these intimidating walkways. From there, caught the 5A bus east to Dulles (an hour long ride). A shuttle bus took visitors to the Museum Annex from there, so long as you paid $0.50 which was really a pittance given the length of the trip. I left King St Metro at 09.30am and arrived at the Udvar Hazy Centre at 1145, so the forward trip took a while.
I had been to the Centre a couple of previous times during other trips to DC, but I have a fascination with these machines and thought it best to indulge the fantasy. I attached myself to a guide who was as usual, knowledgeable, talkative and humorous. He made one slip though which I spoke to him about later, when he said that Baron Richtofen was shot down by a novice English flyer. There is continuing controversery about who actually shot him down and the facts seem to point to ground fire from an Australian machine gunner. But who knows ?
I took a few pictures of interesting aircraft, including:
This is a LOON - looks pretty much the same as a German Buzz Bomb ? I was told it was designed from the German type and prepared for the expected invasion of Japan. Wasn't that clever ?
The Space shuttle "Enterprise":
A P51 Mustang:
A tri motor Junkers 52 - I think this one was donated to the UH Centre by Lufthansa:
and lastly, this Nieuport from WW1. A French built plane, this equipped the US flying squadrons - they didn't have any of their own aircraft on the Western Front.
Like many of the French designs, this aircraft had a radial motor which actually spun at the same rate as the propellor. The torque from these very heavy motors trying to pull the aircraft either left or right, depending on their direction of rotation, must have been hard to counter and at least one of the turns (ie left or right) must have been extremely hard on the biceps !
Lunch at the Udvar Hazy Centre included really terrible coffee, which consumed a significant number of suger sachets before it was fit to drink. Despite that single failing, the day was a good 'un and I thoroughly enjoyed the excursion.
