I was fortunate yesterday to be invited on a pre-opening guided tour of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I visited the museum last year during normal hours when it is packed (8 million visitors a year!!) and found it difficult to get to all the exhibits, let alone see them or get a decent camera angle. We had just over an hour before the doors opened and the experience was unbelievable – also unbelievable was the massive leap in noise levels as soon as the doors opened…

While I’m on the road, I have to work a bit harder for photos to meet each week’s challenge and I was hoping that this tour might provide something for today’s challenge. I got lucky with not one but two (probably would have had more as all the aircraft displays are very well arranged but even without the place to ourselves, my little camera just doesn’t have the field of view to capture the true effect of the arranged displays…

The header image is from the naval aviation hall and shows three aircraft that I’ve always thought significant: the Dauntless that changed history at Midway (even though this one is a late model SBD-6); the Wildcat that fended off early Japanese attacks at places like Wake Island, Coral Sea and Midway; and the A-4 Skyhawk that is very precious to us Kiwis…

Below is the other arrangement that appealed to me…our guide explained that the entrance to the WW1 hall is based upon the legends of the WW1 ‘Knights of the Sky’ and includes a lot of memorabilia that fosters those legends from immediately after the war through to the Aurora models of the 60s. Interestingly, the Fokker suspended over this part of the display is actually not only a WW1 combat veteran but also one of the aircraft that actually flew in movies like Knights of the Sky’…from this light opening, the display then exposes visitors to the darker realities of the first air war…

PS, WordPress, I’m not a ‘change is bad’ kinda guy but I really hate the new button for new posts…too damn hard to find and select categories and tags, no option to save while drafting…if it ain’t broke…

PPS…links to Smithsonian visit slideshow