Here are a few snaps from a recent trip to the Air and Space Museum(s) at the Smithsonian. Most of the shots were taken at the Udvar-Hazy Center by Dulles International Airport.
Hurricane IIC
Westland Lysander
A couple of the Boeing 307
A couple of Korean War classics
Even though it's not quite the right airline, the reason for the trip:
The Blackbird
And finally a Spitfire and Mustang at the National Mall building
Good Stuff Chris
It is sad when, like myself, you remember Raymond Baxter talking us through Concordes
maiden flight and now it's in a museum.
C'est la vie
It's a sad fact that life doesn't always deal the cards you'd like to see dealt. Taken in context.. it's likely that the engine run done on the Brooklands Vanguard last year will turn out to be the last one she'll ever do. If we'd all have known that at the time.. it wouldn't be such a hard pill to swallow but to find this out 11-months on is a great disappointment :-(
Smashing shots though to see an aircraft in a museum is akin to seeing a bird of prey in a cage :-(
I think it's a bit rich them having a Concorde since it was American protests that reduces it's access to the transtlantic route in the early days and dented the commercial success !!
I totally agree - since the US did not develop a SST a little jealousy perhaps? I live around 3 miles from KIAD (Dulles International) and I always loved seeing the Concorde flying in. It was rather loud sometimes but certainly not as loud as the protestors would have you believe. I don't know if you have heard this story but at some point they had set up all sorts of noise monitoring equipment at the end of one of the KIAD runways to monitor Concorde. The pilot requested the other runway and was granted the request.
I always enjoyed seeing Concorde on her approach to DFW International here in Texas. If I remember correctly a Braniff International Airlines crew flew Concorde on the Dulles to DFW leg...subsonic flight of course. ;-) Once I was visiting DFW when Concorde arrived so it gave me a chance to see her up close. Only a small handful of passengers stepped off of her when she arrived at the gate. I guess a subsonic flight on Concorde wasn't a real ticket seller. The thought of a subsonic flight across the US on Concorde always reminded me of a line from the movie 'American Graffiti'..."Geez, what a waste of machinery."
You was the best there ever was.
