Thursday, March 12, 2009

Day 5 - Airplane Day!

We visited the Pima Air & Space Museum.   They have an amazing amount of aircraft both inside and outside.

No picture can really do justice to sheer amounts of aircraft outside.   They had seaplanes, MIGs, training jets, the Super Guppy, presidential aircraft, cargo planes, fire fighting planes, helicopters, and lots and lots of fighter aircraft.

They have their best stuff inside large hangers.   There are docents that have flown in these old planes in WWII.

Stephen was thrilled to see this SR-71 Blackbird.

Nathan found this A10 and declared that it looked just like his model.

I liked this huge seaplane.   Look where the wheels can retract.

This is a B-24 "Liberator".   My uncle flew in one of these and was shot down over France.  He was found by the French underground and smuggled over to the Allied lines.  These planes weren't pressurized so it was very very cold flying in one of these.

My uncle was the bombadier and was in that front glassed in area.

This is a B-29 Superfortress, the first bomber to be pressurized and thus much nicer to fly.   They did have troubles with engine fires though.

They had a seperate building just for the B-17 Flying Fortress.

They even had a children's area where the children could see how the different parts of the plane work.

They even had a mock air traffic controller tower.


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