Duxford Air Show

On Sunday we got up bright and early and headed to the Duxford Imperial War Museum, for the Spitfire 70th Anniversary Air Show.

Duxford IWM is a really quite wonderful Museum and Airfield, and worth a look if you ever find yourselves out this way. It's a scant 10 clicks or so south of Cambridge, and has a great collection of military aircraft of practically all types.

We arrived at the airfield at about 9 in the morning or so. The flying displays were not due to begin until 2pm in the Afternoon, so we had some time on our hands. Which was good - at Duxford there are five or six hangars that you can walk through and look at aircraft displays, or watch old military aircraft being restored.

Here are some photos from within the British "AirSpace" Hangar, containing many examples of British military museums.

Firstly, the very famous Harrier jump jet.



This is the back end of the dead impressive English Electric Lightning. It's worth taking a look at the wikipedia page, as this was an amazing aircraft for its time. The new F-35 is named after this plane.



They have one of the Concorde prototypes here. Sandwiched in with the rest of the planes, it was impossible to get a photo of the entire aircraft. Here are a couple of snaps - the cockpit and the business end of the engines.



It's hard taking Photos in these hangars, as they have really cunningly fit them all in together. Other cool machines in the British AirSpace hangar included Jaguars, a Vulcan bomber, and a Lancaster Bomber.

From there we walked past the outdoor exhibits of historic passenger craft to the American Military Museum hangar. This was another very well presented exhibit.

Best of all, they had one of these things:



It was a great surprise to be able to view one of these extremely impressive beasts up close. This of course is the record breaking Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. It flies higher (85,000 feet) and faster (Mach 3.3) than any other plane out there. It can fly between New York and London in under 2 hours.

Plus they let you get pretty close. I managed to bang my head on the port engine inlet cone (sorry!).

In addition to the SR71 they had an F4 Phantom, an enormous B-52 and a U-2 spyplane amongst others. Cool stuff.

In another hangar we eventually found this very nicely turned out spitfire:



After browsing the hangars we wandered back to our chairs to await the start of the flying displays. On the way back we came across this F-15 on display:



And also this - the capsule used by Richard Branson and Steve Fosset to cross the Atlantic by Balloon.



A rather stiff breeze had whipped up by the time we arrived at our chairs, which meant that unfortunately the Battle of Britain memorial Spitfire flight wasn't going to happen. Not to mention that it wasn't that pleasant sitting there in the cold wind. Eve spent the waiting time having a sleep while I watched the various aircraft getting ready.

The first of the flying displays was a pair of F-15's. Neat-o! Very fast and very loud.



These guys were followed soon after by the very graceful Canberra. This early jet bomber was actually named after the national capital. It is a very dignified and majestic plane.



This was followed by two prop driven fighters - an F6F HellCat and a F4U Corsair. These two put on a pretty good aerobatic display, with plenty of rolls and loops.



Later on a rather odd looking Catalina flying boar took off for a spin. Not the easiest of aircraft on the eye.



This entry is already getting a bit long, so I'd better wind it up. Here are a couple of pictures from a Panavia Tornado flyby.



The small jet trainer in the foreground is a Hawk.

Unfortunately we had to leave before the flying displays finished, as Eve was getting too cold in the wind. Never mind! It was still easily worth the price of entry.