[AKTransAM]

I've been meaning to post this for awhile. This was just about a year ago, when we were at the Portland Swap Meet last year (getting ready to head to the swap meet again in a few weeks which I'll post pics of soon enough ). We heard a lot about this museum, which had THE Spruce Goose, so we stopped by there after the swap meet. As it turned out, it's a really large museum spread across two very large buildings, with a very substantial collection of aircraft across different eras, old engines etc. Well worth the visit if you're ever in this neck of the woods. Amazing aircraft as you'll see below. Spread over a few pages

Entrance


The Spruce Goose which is the centerpiece, quite literally, of this entire building. It was too large to get in one pic.


Tail Section


Close up. Those engines looked entirely way too tiny for this aircraft


Variety of old engines. One of them was a Corvair engine (yes the car engine) that was used to power aircraft as well. Since the Corvair was legendarily underpowered (a friend has one, trust me the saying "You had to push them downhill" is true) not sure if I'd have trusted going up in an aircraft powered by one hehe














Another close up of the Spruce Goose


Reproduction of the famous Spirit of St. Louis

[AKTransAM]

Page 2

A better pic of the Spruce Goose taken by my friend


A4 Skyhawk


I think this aircraft was used in "The Man with the Golden Gun"


Neat seeing the Bell Cobra (may have been the Viper, can't remember) up close





PBY Catalina


The legendary Huey. This one was a Vietnam veteran. If it could talk, it would have some stories








One of my favorites. The legendary Phantom. Proof that even a brick can fly if it has powerful enough engines (that was a line from a movie that still sticks in my mind!)


Phantom cockpit


Another one of my favorites. The F105 Thunderchief (aka the Thud). An aircraft that was put into service in Vietnam to perform a role it was never designed for. At the time it was introduced, it was the largest single seat single engine combat plane in history. This was the F105-G variant (Wild Weasel)


I've always thought the Wild Weasel crews were among the gutsiest. This aircraft and it's crew lived a charmed life-they flew 20 anti SAM missions and lived to tell the tale!


The old Corsair


MiG-17


The FW-190 "Butcher Bird", under the wing of the Spruce Goose


Beautiful painting


A reproduction of the Me-262 Stormbird, also under the wing of the Spruce Goose











Small part of the interior of the Spruce Goose


Another interior section of the Spruce Goose

[AKTransAM]

Page 3 pics continued

MiG-29. This was an early variant Fulcrum A


Rear of the Fulcrum


Turned out there was a slalom course on the runway (this used to be an old airport I think) section in between the museum buildings. It was really cool to watch the cars go through the paces. Huge variety of cars-European, American, Japanese





Replica of the moon lander


Replica of the moon buggy


The venerable Sikorsky H19





Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. This was a NASA testbed aircraft


THE SR-71 Blackbird. Massive. This display had the D-21 drone alongside it








The SR-71 Pratt and Whitney J58 engine. Work of art for what it was capable of







D-21 drone





The MiG-21 Fishbed (MF variant if I recall)


The Fairchild Thunderbolt II (more known as Warthog)


MiG-23 Flogger





F-15A


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[fhdowntheline]

Wow, this looks just like the Smithsonian or Wright Patterson AFB !
These machines show why the USA is still the no 1 country in the world in technology. It is the collective effort and passion of scientists and engineers who came up with innovative, path breaking solutions, were not afraid of taking risks to maintain the edge in technology. Having said that, it is sad to see them struggling over nuts, bolts and single point of failure designs these days.

[Mrs&Mr_Shenu]

Just wow to see the aviation history.

You have shared pictures that tells story. Thanks for sharing.

[kaak009]

Man what a collection this is, I remember the story where an Iraqi pilot flew Mig-21 all the way from Iraq to Israel all for 1 million dollars. And Americans wanted to see the fighter while understanding the complexities of flying the aircraft since it was a hidden commodity for the West. Israel got quite a lot of favours from Americans for a chance to fly the aircraft. The result of the pilot fleeing? Israel defeated the Gulf countries within a few hours who were the sole operators of Mig-21

[CJP]

The SR71 is one of my favourite aircraft for what it was capable of and the sheer engineering feat it was at that time and probably will continue to be well into the future. Can't imagine that a bunch of engineers with slide rules and manual draughtsmanship pulled this off. A feat that is difficult to match even today.

Kudos to the engineers who conceived, designed and built this incredible machine.

[Passatman]

The Me 262 and the SR 71 truly represent the pinnacle of technology for their times! Both are lovely,though lethal,works of art. The FW190 too looks good. Any Stuka bombers, Me 109 ,Spitfires, Mustangs, Hellcats,Wildcats Or em Jap Zeros ? These WW2 machines have mesmerizing names and a charm of their own ; rather like the vintage sports cars!

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by Passatman

The Me 262 and the SR 71 truly represent the pinnacle of technology for their times! Both are lovely,though lethal,works of art. The FW190 too looks good. !

Indeed! It is a tantalizing "what-if" scenario where the ME262 was used for what it was designed to do, rather than assigned to.

Even the FW190 was a great plane that got the Allies sweating a bit.

[skanchan95]

Originally Posted by AKTransAM

Neat seeing the Bell Cobra (may have been the Viper, can't remember) up close

It's a single engine AH-1, so a Cobra - probably an AH-1F or S. The mean looking Viper(AH-1Z) is twin engined and has four blade main rotor ,while the AH-1W Super Cobra and below have a two blade main rotor.

Originally Posted by AKTransAM

Another one of my favorites. The F105 Thunderchief (aka the Thud). An aircraft that was put into service in Vietnam to perform a role it was never designed for. At the time it was introduced, it was the largest single seat single engine combat plane in history. This was the F105-G variant (Wild Weasel)

I see the pilot name to be that of Major Leo Thorsness. He flew an F-105F on his Medal of Honor winning mission, in which he not only shot down a MiG-17 ( a role that the F-105 was completely unfit for) but also destroyed a couple of SAM sites and then circled the area despite being low of fuel to co-ordinate a SAR effort to rescue a downed crew of an F-105F from his formation. His mission was featured in one episode of "Dogfights". He was later shot down flying an F-105F and spent six years as a PoW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlqfXlnOmZM