London-first day

1/23/10
Imperial War Air Museum
Duxford, U.K.

Casie:
Today we visited the Air Museum and I must say I learned so much about British airspace. I did not think I would be too interested but I was. There were so many models and information on the entire process of building an aircraft. I got to see the progression of how the airplane came to be so successful as it is today. One of the earlier experiments included hot air balloon experiments. I loved reading individual stories of people’s involvement with the aircraft development. A daring lady, Elisabeth “Dolly” Sedgewick known as the “Parachute Queen” was a pioneer balloonist and parachutist. She worked as a waitress and volunteered for the experiment.

We got to look inside the Concorde. It was the only successful supersonic passenger airplane in British airspace history built by Britain and France. December 1971 was its first flight. It crashed in 2007 and then shut down. Max speed was 1,450 mph and weight was 169,000 (empty). It was an impressive plane.

This was a place I knew my dad would have loved. He would have loved to see the hangers, airplane engines, and rockets on display. It was a well laid out museum. I really liked being able to focus on a single aspect of the war such as airplanes. The museum did a good job displaying the complexity and details of construction.
It helped me see that it takes so many members to collaborate and successfully produce weapons during the war. They not only need skilled architects and engineers but also well trained pilots and courageous people to try out the new equipment.

Becca:
Today we visited the Imperial War Air Museum at Duxford (about an hour outside of London). We got off of the Chunnel train and onto a bus to take us here. I didn’t know what to expect for an “air” museum, but was pleasantly surprised. The main AirSpace exhibit had a lot of interesting information in it about the history of aviation and Britain’s role in the industry, which has swelled and contracted in relation to demand for new products, Before World War I, Britain had a very small number of planes, and both world wars demanded more production and innovation in this field. This exhibit seemed to support the view that war helps the economy, which has recently become a controversial view, considering the disruptions that wars create in terms of workers, allocation of resources, and trade. In any case, the wars did help spur on technological advancements that pushed the aviation field to new levels.

One of my favorite parts of the museum was a video that I watched on strategic bombing. It went through the modern wars and discussed different bombing strategies for each war and the progression of conventional thinking. It discussed the Dresden fire bombings, which I had learned about in my Europe Since 1939 class and in the “rolling classroom” on this trip. They were incredibly controversial as the targets in Dresden were cultural targets rather than military ones, and the majority of casualties were civilians, numbering in the tens of thousands. The video went all the way up to the Iraq War and the “Shock and Awe” strategy used by the American military to put a “quick end” to the war. Hmm…

Another cool thing about this museum was that it had information on the material used in aviation products – including polyethylene. I have a special connection to this type of “wonder” plastic – part of my artificial jaw joints are made of it. ☺

Overall, it was pretty cool to see so many different types of airplanes in one place, especially since my grandfather was a colonel in the Air Force and flew during the Vietnam War. I’m looking forward to the rest of London in the next couple of days. Ahhhhh, I love this place.