"Off We Go"

"Off We Go" into the wild blue yonder!!!  Our nation has plenty of museums for all those air plane aficionados out there and the Smithsonian is right up there as part of the best!   Between the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and the lesser known Udvar-Hazy Museum (a part of the ever expanding Smithsonian Institute) located at Dulles International Airport we saw more aircraft than I could possible include in the chapter of our adventures!!!  I shot more than 326 photos between the two museums ... needless to say they will not all be here today .... both museums were very crowded, (not by people although there were a lot of those too!) but by planes thus making it difficult to get photos of individual aircraft.  So, come fly with me ....................................

 

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC seemed to focus on historic military aircraft, current and future uses for aircraft and space exploration - the last frontier.

 

World War II fighters:

 



 Messerschmidt (ME-109)

North American P-51 Mustang

Spitfire

Japanese Zero

 

 

Human powered aircraft - peddled like a bicycle -  MacCready Gossamer Condor

 

The Spirit of St. Louis

 

 Two of the
first commercial air lines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The future of military

aviation - UAV

(Unmanned aerialvehicles)

The MQ-1L Predator A

The DarkStar X-45A

 

Space - the last frontier .....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apollo Space Capsule

Model of Lunar Lander

 Foot of a Lunar Lander

 
Appollo II Command Module

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Boeing FB-5

 

                                          Farman Sport

                                                                                   Benoist-Korn Type XII

Nieuport 28C.1

Spad XVI

                                      Fowler-Gage Byplane

Model of 1917 Sopwith Camel showing wooden substructure

                                          Loening OA-1A

Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay





 

It's a crowded sky!!

 

 

Gliders were represented too.

NASA Pathfinder Plus - Solar Power Plane

Discovery - she is huge!!!!

Satellites by the dozens !

Lockheed SR 71-A Blackbird

 
 
 
This is one sweet Blackbird !!!

There was so much to see at Udvar-Hazy and I understand that this Museum is not very well known. So, those of you who still travel, I highly recommend going to see it all for yourselves.  You can easily spend one whole day or more to see everything.  I've only touched on the 'highlights'.

There is still lots to see from our Washing DC visit so ...

More Soon  🐾🐾🌷🌷