Thursday 22 September 2016

Road Trip! Duxford: Planes


I recently went to Duxford, which is where the Imperial War Museum keep a lot of their planes and big stuff that doesn't fit at the London site.


I will be honest, this was mostly just snapping some photos of random things that caught my eye.


This plane was commonly used to drop agents off in occupied France during WWII - mostly because it could land on a runway 150 metres long! The little ladder on the side is to help the passenger get out quickly so the plane can take off again.


Lancaster wings!


Lancaster cockpit! I really am not great about framing some of these, but there's not a huge amount of space - things are layered up all over the place and sometimes you can't get far enough back for a good picture.


A Mosquito...


Some WWII plane or other. For some reason labelled it as a Spitfire. Clearly not. Observer plane because of all the side windows?


I took a picture of this because I wondered what Horsa was - they were an Anglo-Saxon chieftan. I was getting confused with Horza, who is a character in an Iain M Banks novel I should really read at some point. The plan is the last surviving example of the make that had one crash in the middle of a desert somewhere.


The inside of Concorde.


A tactical nuclear weapon. It's really rather terrifying quite how small it is.


Lancaster tail gun.


The biplane again.


Flying fortress, with the right hand side painted with one set of nose art for filming purposes...


While the left hand side has the original art...

9 comments:

  1. Fantastic place must go again 😀 Now I'm not an expert but the plane with the windows is I think an Avro Anson training plane used for training bomber crews, the little plane is a Westland Lysander I was hoping to get one of these for my operation Sealion games, but the kit is too much on eBay.

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    1. I,ve now had another look on net having sparked my interest and if you google duxford list of aircraft you can find pictures of everything with their names. Lovely planes

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    2. Did you not learn to identify every WWII aeroplane by silhouette alone as a small boy ?!?!

      I thought everybody did. I even taught my little sister how to tell the difference between a hurricane and MK1 spitfire.

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    3. Not everyone! I was never a huge planes kid - I was better with dinosaurs. And I've forgotten it all now!

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  2. Very nice pics! I was there in February when I was back in Blighty to visit my Gran. I really should get around to posting those pics...

    Did you get to tour the tanks exhibit?

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