World War II airplanes

We had three very cool planes land near us for just 2 days...so we knew we had to take the time to go see them.  We not only got to see the three planes used in WWII...but, we got to go inside two of them!  It was such a cool experience.  One was the same type of plane used in the movie Memphis Belle.  This was part of the Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom tour

This first one was the Memphis Belle style plane.

 B-17 Bomber.

crawling up into the plane

sitting in the nose gunner seat.

Hannah's turn in the gunner seat.

Can you see us?  I'm guessing the swastikas are the number of missions this one flew?  I just noticed them, or else I would have asked.

This was the navigator's desk

black box?

a bomb "to Hitler, from "the mighty"

Nicole was intrigued with the communications desk

Look!  She even found a tool to tap out messages in Morse code!

Walking through a portion of the cabin.

"trying out" the machine guns.

this, in my opinion, would be the worst job to have!  small space!

the tail gunner

B-24J Liberator

talking with a civil air patrol student before crawling up into the plane.

Nathan really seemed to enjoy this morning

This was looking back to the tail of the plane where the tail gunner would be.  The metal track on the left is what carried the ammunition from the boxes to the back of the plane where the gun was.

More machine guns

Nate even liked it.

This plane will take people for a ride for over $2,500/ticket.  Since we couldn't afford that...we opted to just sit in the seat and pretend;)

This was an amazing catwalk to connect the cock pit with the gunners in the back.  Imagine squeezing your way through there, 10,000 feet or more above ground, with bombs by your side.  No thank you!  (yes...that is a bomb on the left.)

cock pit

This plane dropped 130 bombs.  

the kids were getting a lesson in propellers here.

TP 51-C Mustang

We were not allowed to get in this one.  We were given special permission to cross the ropes to take a picture next to it.  But, we were asked not to touch it.

A small building at the airport held a little WWII museum.  We thought that while we were there, we would check it out.  The kids watched some little videos from WWII.  Here are some artifacts I found.

French gas mask

oxygen tank

flight computer ;)

Japanese guns

a seat/parachute.  (I found out that my friend's aunt used to make these in a factory during the war.)

This was probably one of the coolest experiences we have had this school year.