No clue why this is on the HN homepage, but I love aviation museums. It is so difficult to feel scale with aircraft due to the fact that most of the images are of them flying and so there is no context. Seeing them in person can really help put them in perspective.
>It is so difficult to feel scale with aircraft due to the fact that most of the images are of them flying and so there is no context. Seeing them in person can really help put them in perspective.
100% this. I got to ride in Vera, one of two airworthy Avro Lancasters, a few years ago, and I was shocked how small and cramped it was. The C-130 Hercules, far from the largest military transport today, feels luxurious and roomy by comparison. And that was the RAF's premier bomber, among the heaviest bomb loads.
And likewise, the comparison between a P-47 and a Bf 109 is not something you can really appreciate until you see them side by side. I would not have wanted to go to war in that cramped metal sarcophagus of a Messershmitt.
If you like this, strongly recommend you check out the National Museum of the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio. They have everything you can imagine. https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/
I also suggest the italian air force museum near Rome.
https://www.aeronautica.difesa.it/home/storia-e-tradizione/m...
(use italian version for the virtual tour, in the english version it's broken, typical italian public administration website, sorry folks).
Roy Chadwick was responsible for designing the Avro Aldershot (massive biplane, first flew 1924), Lancaster (1941) and the initial stages of the Vulcan (1952, he never saw it fly). Then in 1947, barely two months after Chadwick was killed in an accident, Chuck Yeager goes through the sound barrier. That's a hell of a rate of change!
I wonder which planes from that era are "nice to fly" by modern standards. As a point of reference, the Cessna 172 trainer originates from the C170 which was designed right after World War 2. It's an extremely forgiving and well designed plane.
People like to say that the tech industry is young but most don't realize that general aviation is only a few steps removed from the early days of Wright Brothers and their contemporaries like Dumont and Blériot. It's mostly civil aviation and military-adjacent aircrafts like the X experimentals that are truly pushing the boundaries.
It's a pity that clean sheet designs of airplanes made from composites (most famously your Diamonds and Cirruses) are dreadfully expensive to maintain relative to the old school aluminium frame designs. The composite (carbon fiber polymers) airframes have way better aerodynamic characteristics and benefit a lot more from the past 50 years of aerodynamic advances. Though given the fact that modern EVs have very aerodynamic external aluminium shells, I wonder if some of the limitations of shaping aluminium into complex aerodynamic shapes have been resolved (composites are much simpler to shape, they are basically fabric version of 3D printing).
For anyone interested there is a book by Eric 'Winkle' Brown who was a British test pilot and probably flew more different types of WW2 (and other) aircraft than anyone else and has a lot of stories about how they were too fly.
From what I've read about WW2 Aircraft from that collection the P-51 Mustang and Spitfire are almost universally considered excellent to fly even by pilots of who fly them today, great performance, pilot friendly with few vices even when pushed hard. The B-25 Mitchell is one maybe not as often talked about but was and still is considered a great aircraft to fly with nice performance and handling characteristics.
There's plenty that could still fly well but did have some flaws or nasty vices when pushed to the limits in some cases, for example the BF109 was loved by it's experienced pilots and was quite a small and light aircraft with excellent climb peformance but also had a notoriously small, cramped cockpit with poor visibility and very narrow landing gear. Some absurd number like almost half of all BF109s were lost in landing accidents because it was so difficult to land.
100% this. I got to ride in Vera, one of two airworthy Avro Lancasters, a few years ago, and I was shocked how small and cramped it was. The C-130 Hercules, far from the largest military transport today, feels luxurious and roomy by comparison. And that was the RAF's premier bomber, among the heaviest bomb loads.
And likewise, the comparison between a P-47 and a Bf 109 is not something you can really appreciate until you see them side by side. I would not have wanted to go to war in that cramped metal sarcophagus of a Messershmitt.
People like to say that the tech industry is young but most don't realize that general aviation is only a few steps removed from the early days of Wright Brothers and their contemporaries like Dumont and Blériot. It's mostly civil aviation and military-adjacent aircrafts like the X experimentals that are truly pushing the boundaries.
It's a pity that clean sheet designs of airplanes made from composites (most famously your Diamonds and Cirruses) are dreadfully expensive to maintain relative to the old school aluminium frame designs. The composite (carbon fiber polymers) airframes have way better aerodynamic characteristics and benefit a lot more from the past 50 years of aerodynamic advances. Though given the fact that modern EVs have very aerodynamic external aluminium shells, I wonder if some of the limitations of shaping aluminium into complex aerodynamic shapes have been resolved (composites are much simpler to shape, they are basically fabric version of 3D printing).
From what I've read about WW2 Aircraft from that collection the P-51 Mustang and Spitfire are almost universally considered excellent to fly even by pilots of who fly them today, great performance, pilot friendly with few vices even when pushed hard. The B-25 Mitchell is one maybe not as often talked about but was and still is considered a great aircraft to fly with nice performance and handling characteristics.
There's plenty that could still fly well but did have some flaws or nasty vices when pushed to the limits in some cases, for example the BF109 was loved by it's experienced pilots and was quite a small and light aircraft with excellent climb peformance but also had a notoriously small, cramped cockpit with poor visibility and very narrow landing gear. Some absurd number like almost half of all BF109s were lost in landing accidents because it was so difficult to land.