On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
It’s Friday, and we are at the end of our third full week without Alain. Pretty sure he would have loved these pics; he would surely love that he is not forgotten.
BretH
The recent photos of old warbirds recalled to me my visit to the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach. For any boy or girl who had spent hours making and painting old plastic model airplanes this was childhood come to life. While the exhibits are nice, and the people are fantastic, the jewel is the hangers full of pristine examples of WWI and WWII aircraft. They are jammed in to fit as best as they can and pretty much everything is open for spending leisurely time viewing these amazing aircraft “up close and personal”.
P40 Warhawk (later Kittyhawk)
As my daughter and I pulled into the Museum grounds there was a car-shaking roar from overhead as their P40 was making an approach to land. I must admit my heart was taken from me right then and there, watching the living example of what I had experienced only in books and on the worktable circle overhead and land just in front of us. I had a wonderful chat with the pilot afterward, who basically shook his head at the joy of being able to fly these planes.
Supermarine Spitfire
The famed airplane from the Battle for Britain. Such lovely lines!
P51 Mustang
Just another view of this magnificent aircraft.
P51 Mustang
Me, a star-struck grown up boy. It, the plane I had made so many models of, just sitting in front of the hangar with no-one to tell me “don’t get so close”. If you understand, you’ll know how I felt. If not, it’s still a great visit to a museum preserving a history in a way that keeps it alive for future generations.
Litlebritdifrnt
A very apt post for the 75th anniversary of VE Day. It is a National Holiday over here.
JPL
Perfect post for the day, as littlebrit said.
eclare
Interesting photos!
p.a.
Had a modified (2 seater for enthusiast rides) P51 do a low level flyover from a nearby small state airport. Sound was… wow. I know the bubbleglass was much better for the pilots, but I think the original design looks more integrated. The rides (this was a decade-ish ago) were IIRC $500/hour. If I had known at the time, I would have seriously thought abt it. Beautiful plane, bubble or not.
Thanks!
raven
@p.a.: This one was here a couple of years back and I think it was $2K for a ride.
raven
@p.a.: And I won a scholarship auction and got a ride in this baby for $150!
p.a.
@raven: ??????
zhena gogolia
No B-17s?
J R in WV
My uncle was a turret gunner in a B-24 in the South Pacific. He never talked about it with me, but his son, my only cousin left in WV, has told me about his dad’s experiences to the limited degree he could talk about it at all. In many ways he was a favorite uncle. I can’t imagine being in the turret firing a twin .50 machine gun during a bombing run, taking flak, wondering if you would ever get back out of the turret, which was below the aircraft’s belly.
There were 405,000 American military deaths in WW II — Now I wonder when we will pass that unhappy mark with coronavirus deaths in peacetime.
raven
@J R in WV:
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
BY RANDALL JARRELL
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
low-tech cyclist
There’s a wonderful book in my collection, with a ton of photos, about the art that aviators painted on their planes, especially during WWII. It’s titled simply “Nose Art,” by Jeffrey Ethell and Clarence Simonson. Definitely worth a look if you can track it down.
raven
@low-tech cyclist: This discussion sent me down the Okinawa rathole and I found two books about the “picket line” in the last battle of WW2. This was my old man’s ship.
C
kindness
Those WWII planes are LOUD. They do air shows out of the local airports up and down the valley here in central CA every year (except this year) and you know what weekend it is because you can hear the planes everywhere.
frosty
I’m putting this museum on my travel list now. The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading PA puts on a great airshow every year in June. Along with the usual US planes I saw a Zero last year and a Lancaster and Hurricane many years ago.
Mike in NC
I’ve gotten rides in a restored B-17 and B-25. Very cool. Despite spending a lot of time in VA Beach over the years, never made it to this particular museum. Going to visit the Pensacola museum some day when travel is normalized.
PAM Dirac
@J R in WV:
My Dad was a bombardier in a B-24 in Europe. He didn’t talk about it much and I didn’t really think about it much til I went through his records after he died. There was one stretch where he flew something like 14 missions in 18 days. I think the shortest was about 7-8 hours, most were about 10-11 hours. So you cram yourself into a cold, hard, uncomfortable, loud space for 4-5 hours, all hell breaks loose and you have to do your job to hit the target and then hope your plane is in good enough shape to do the 4-5 hours it takes to get back. And the good news is you get a few hours sleep and you get to do it again. I kind of see why you wouldn’t talk about it much, it seems hard to believe that that was real.
JustRuss
My dad was in the Army Air Corps, the war ended before he deployed. I still have his yearbook from training camp, it’s like a highschool yearbook only more military. Very cool. And the certificate he received when passed the Pratt & Whitney radial engine mechanic course.
Origuy
The British archaeological shoe Time Team did an excavation of a Spitfire that crashed in Wierre-Effroy, France in 1940. They closed the program with a reading of “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds –
and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of –
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there I’ve chased the shouting wind along
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
“Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God.”
motopilot
Great to see your post with these photos of old WWII planes.
Here on the West coast we have several flight museums with old WWII aircraft. Boeing has one in Mukilteo, WA.
Another is in an old blimp hanger in Tillamook, Oregon, where all the planes there are in flying condition. There is nothing like hearing a big radial engine in a F4U Corsair start up.
There is another flight museum in McMinnville, Oregon where a B17 sits next to the Spruce Goose. That is a sight to behold. I always thought the B-17 was a big plane, but the Goose is huge. I was touring this facility and my wife and I had a personal guide that was an 81 year old former combat pilot that flew both the P-51 Mustang and the P-38 Lightning. He was really fun to talk with.
And at a winery in my little hometown on Whidbey Island I also had the pleasure of meeting a pilot that was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was fascinating to talk with as we sipped on wine. His family kept rolling their eyes as another story came out until they had enough and gently pulled him away.