The Albatross
Monday 18 March 2024
The day started poorly, we’d both been craving a bit of lamb, which isn’t widely popular over here. Apparently because of one of the military ration tins for US troops in WWII being a lamb stew which was revolting. So, an entire generation of young men came back refusing to eat it ever again, which of course rolled on to future generations). The lamb chops we had looked and smelt okay, however it seemed to run through both of us in the morning hours.
After a shitty start we went off to Boeing, which hosts a vast “Museum of Flight”. It’s cool, it is so incredibly cool. The collection is massive. We started in the great gallery, which has a SR-71 Blackbird in the centre (this is actually an M-21 designed to launch an even faster scram jet powered unmanned probe than its already insane Mach 3.2). There are also a host of other military craft from Korea onwards, including a couple of Migs (15 and 21), a Huey, F4 etc. The collection of civilian aircraft is also massive, all showing steps in the evolution of flight. In this room alone there are over 50 aircraft which you can see from both the ground and above. They even have an original V1 buzz bomb.
There is a mock up air tower which overlooks Boeing’s airfield (this is still a working factory site), however this was full of small children trying to smash stuff to pieces whilst the mother looked on. We then walked through the small Apollo/space race section before heading for a bit of a sit down, we’d been in there for hours by this stage.
Next stop was the “Red Barn”, the original Boeing factory, outlining the history of the companies journey through to about the mid 50’s. By this time our feet had given way, so we departed but not before we drove around to the other side of the museum to get a glimpse of tomorrow’s viewing, and to try and find an old minute man silo. This was down a road that really didn’t look like civilians should be driving down so we decide not to.
