Oh Oshkosh!

"Oh no, not another museum," I hear you say.

Powered flight came after the motor car. It seems to have progressed a lot more though!

Well I'm afraid so. This one's the EAA museum of aviation innovation here in Oshkosh, a place that sounds like an expletive. Once a year the nearby airfield hosts the biggest independent air show in the world. Over three quarters of a million people turn up to share their love of all things aeronautical.

A WWII workhorse.

The museum has a large hall devoted to the airmen of WWII, but the main hall contains a huge collection of private planes. Experimental is the keyword here - a lot of these planes were designed and built by the owners.

Dick Rutan is possibly the world's most innovative aircraft designer.

This did fly - rather well.

Now some people find museums boring, dusty places. Places that show things from the past - and that's it.

But a short phrase from an introductory film made me ponder on why we enjoy them so much. The chap in the film said something like:

"if you walk round this museum and just see planes, then you've missed the point. What we have here represents dreams, enterprise, effort, ingenuity and a lot more."

Imagine how this came to be here.

And that sums it up in a nutshell. Collections in museums, whatever they are, are more than just relics. The objects laid out before us can be a starting point for our imaginations. It doesn't matter whether they are natural or man made, everything has a story behind it. And it's understanding that story that brings to life the magic of museums.

This plane was affectionately known as The Duck. Ugly it may be, but to the airmen who had ditched in the water it was a welcome sight indeed. There are stories of Ducks travelling miles on the water back to safety, because there were so many rescued men aboard she couldn't take off.
















 

 This is the first commercial plane to reach outer space, SpaceShipOne. It took years of fundraising, skill and hard work to fire this ship out of the atmosphere. Mike Melvill, the pilot who took that ride wasn't sure he would live to tell the tale. The team won a ten million dollar prize for being first.

This is one of my favourites - the magnificent Mosquito. A plane designed and built in Britain.

Made principally of wood, it nevertheless had a huge part in winning WWII. It was just about the most versatile plane in Britain's arsenal, fast and adaptable. Even Goering thought it was a winner!

Its skin is plywood made in Oshkosh, so you could say it's come home.

 

This little thing was designed and built by its owner - and it does fly apparently. Imagine the first time it left the ground.

America needed a lot of these to fight the war.

Courtesy of Ford, they were making one an hour at one point. What a triumph of organisation.

These leather jackets are the real thing. The bombs represent each sortie from England. Most of the airfields were in East Anglia.

So I can imagine these being worn down to the local pub in Horsham St Faith, impressing the locals. How glamourous they must have seemed in war torn Britian.

This is a real ME 109 cockpit from a plane downed in Kent during WWII.

Imagine the pilots using these controls...

This is a spare casing made for the first Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Imagine the secrecy surrounding its production.

So that's why we love museums. They provide hours of entertainment, even if most of it is going on in our heads.

I imagine this is the happiest plane on the planet!