Duxford Airbase - needed a second visit.

The walk way at the far end has lots of interactive displays on flight - vistors can walk through many of the planes. image from wiki

Apparently this airbase, in Cambridgeshire, was the first to take delivery of Spitfires from the factory in WWII. It has a hanger all about the Battle of Britain. The displays, in all the old and purpose built hangers, are an exceptional collection of flight and fliers.  Book tickets here http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-duxford

It is amazing that after DaVinci's drawings and experiments in the early 1500s, it took over 300 more years for other people to work on the same ideas. (Falling with style according to Woody and Buzz Lightyear)  On March 31 1902 a Kiwi, Richard Pearse, is reported to have flown his invention for around 300m. Sometime in 1903 he eventually crashed into the top of a 4m hedge after a km in the air. Not bad for a flightless bird!
Read here for more  http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/pearse1.html 
The world accepted inventors of engine powered flight, the Wright bros, are recorded experimenting with flight since 1899 and flew a glider in 1902 then their powered Kitty Hawk flight in 1903, Dec 17.  The smart thing they did was to have their 59sec flight recorded on film to prove it to a disbelieving world. Have a look at that footage here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5o-fhBKf8Y 

When WWI broke out in July 1914 the generals were skeptical that flying machines would be useful for anything but reconnaissance. On April 1, 1915 French pilot Roland Garros had some extra steel wrapped around the base of his propeller and took a machine gun up with him. His total of 5 enemy kills became the legendary 'ACE' standard. He was caught behind lines and the Germans had a Dutch aircraft engineer - Anthony Fokker - look at the machine and demanded that he produce a duplicate to be demonstrated in 48hrs.  His team improved the idea and he was sent up to the front to test it. He choose not to shoot down an unsuspecting French plane and told the Germans to get one of their pilots to do the killing.  Oswald Boelcke became 'the Knight of Germany' with 40 kills to his name at his death in 1916.  He also found von Richthofen and invited him to join his special squad. The Red Baron was shot down by Australian Lewis gunners after shooting 80 enemy planes from the sky.  Long before the aeroplane was very useful for transporting passengers or delivering cargo, humans had worked out how to throw bombs out of it to kill.

Duxford has hangers full of the earliest passenger planes, flying boats, the experimental first supersonic aircraft. One hanger is full of US planes including the very cool looking invisible reconnaissance aircraft 'Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird' - gave me the same shivers as the name 'Mufassa' gave the warthogs in Lion King even though it wasn't fitted with any weapons. If the soviets ever spotted it they knew that the firepower wouldn't be far behind the supersonic super sleuth. 

Aeronautical displays

Very low flyby of BA's biggest cargo plane on route to Amsterdam then Chicago then back to England.

The plane at the top of the pyramid at this airbase though is the Spitfire. RJ Mitchell designed the MkI which was then put into mass production, to assist the Hurricanes, under the pressure of relentless attacks from the Luftwaffe in WWII Britain needed a plane to outmaneuver and fly longer than the Messerschmidt and Junkers. The German invasion troops were lined along the French coast waiting for the British air threat to be killed off. All of England was on high alert with observation sites and radio shacks up and down the southern coast. Hitler made the decision to move his troops to the Eastern front and get rid of the commmunist threat when the Spifires and their pilots proved too strong. This retreat marked the end of the Battle of Britain.

Asked by Hermann Goering, his supreme commander, what he needed to win the Battle of Britain, Adolf Galland, the Luftwaffe's leading ace, replied: "Spitfires".  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4197482/Why-have-we-never-honoured-man-who-invented-the-Spitfire.html 

M and Petal went to the airfield again for the Airshow, the billowing clouds make some of their photos look as if they were taken above the planes. 

Added Bonus to the picnic and thermos

Keen pilots?

We finally found M and left him to roam.

G,M and Petal in the American Hanger
Excellent Pacific War section.

Indian feast at Pipasha for Father's Day(Aus)

Time for a movie after a big day out. Are those goggles M?

Read: The Bean Trees  Barbara Kingsolver's first novel. Abacus 1988

Incredible characterisation, no wonder she went on to write huge best sellers - Lacuna and The Poisonwood Bible. The voices of all the people you meet in Taylor Marietta Greer's life are real and honest. She's a Kentucky girl who leaves her encouraging mum and escapes the small bigoted world she grew up in. Leaving in a VW without windows or working ignition she faces the plains of Oklahoma and the dry of Arizona.  She finds out that the world is just the same as Kentucky but on a bigger scale, people who love, people who are scared so hang onto their place by hating. She accidentally rescues an abused Cherokee toddler and learns about the tough world of people smuggling.

"I had this notion that at one time in life she had been larger, but that someone had split her in two like one of those hollow wooden dolls, finding this smaller version inside." p93

"It's funny how people don't give that much thought to what kids want, as long as they're being quiet....it's hard to be depressed around a three year old, if you're paying attention. After a while, whatever you're mooning about begins to seem like some elaborate adult invention." p209

"When I was Turle's age I had never had anyone or anything important taken from me. ... Maybe I hadn't started out with a whole lot, but pretty near all of it was still with me." p211