Saturday, August 22, 2009

Frequent Fliers

Anyone who spends more than a minute with my boys know their obsession with airplanes. Hence, the reason why we spend so much time hanging out at Airplane Museums, Airports, Air shows, etc. Here are a few pictures of the boys home made aircraft and yesterday's trip to one of the Smithsonian Museums of Air and Space.

Our Basement Boeing 737! "Control Tower, are we clear for take off?"

Words can't even express the excitement level in my munchkins when we visit the museum. Check out Nash's vertical jump for joy! Now that is impressive.

Here is a picture of the ENOLA GAY, the airplane that dropped one of the Atomic Bombs on Japan during WWII. The curator explained the circumstances in the following way. Apparently, the pilots were not aware of what type of bomb they were carrying. This information was kept secret for fear that the military personnel would possibly back out of the operation if they knew the damage they were about to inflict on the Japanese. I guess the pilots figured it out pretty quickly when the mushroom cloud produced by the bomb exceeded their airplanes 31,000 feet of altitude by more than 2 miles nearly causing them to crash.




Some of the boys favorite aircraft include the SR-71 Blackbird. This plane flew from L.A. to Washington D.C. in 64 minutes in 1990, averaging well over 2000 miles per hour. Atley's favorite plane is the Concorde. In fact, he recently informed a French Missionary that the Concorde stopped flying not because of the 2000 fatal crash near Paris but because, and I quote, "operating costs were too high."

2 comments:

G&G said...

Love, how did we get to be such an airplane family???? Owe it all to Grandpa.

Roscoe and Daisy said...

My boys would love that museum too- I loved going there when I lived in Virginia. I remember doing a book report on Amelia Earheart and taking a picture of the model plane she would of flown. I totally love that museum too! Airplanes are cool!