Udvar-Hazy Centre (National Air and Space Museum) VA USA

The control tower (which we didn’t have time to visit) and the entrance to the Udvar-Hazy Museum

About 40 mins drive away from Phil and Lesley’s house, on the edge of Dulles Airfield, is the Udvar-Hazy Centre, part of the Smithsonian’s National Aerospace Museum.  Seeing as we are both keen on aviation we just had to visit.

Half of the main display hall

Opened in 2003, the museum houses a huge collection of aircraft and space vehicles, arranged in 2 interconnected hangers.  We were certainly impressed when we walked into the first and largest hall (the Boeing Aviation Hangar); there were aeroplanes everywhere and not just on the hangar floor.  Many had been hung from the roof in action poses.

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

It was hard not to be in awe of the Lockheed SR-71Blackbird surveillance aircraft, almost the first exhibit we came across, and (when in service) capable of attaining Mach 3+.  Looking at it, it’s amazing to think that it dates from the early 1960s, seeing service with the USAF from 1964 to 1998.

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk “Lope’s Hope”

But to also get our hearts racing, suspended above were classic WW2 aircraft such as the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk (above) and…

Top: The Enola Gay (famous for dropping the atom bomb on Nagsaki) and, in her shadow, the P-47 Thunderbolt. Bottom: Hawker Hurricane

Top: Corsair.  Bottom: Kugisho MXY7 Ohka
Model 22 (Japanese Kamikaze aircraft)

… the Enola Gay with the P-47 Thunderbolt and the British Hawker Hurricane tucked almost underneath her. There’s also a distinctive gull-winged Corsair, so important in the Pacific campaign, suspended from the hangar’s roof.

But the museum isn’t just about American and British aircraft.  There are aircraft from all parts of the world and all sides of every air war (military and civilian).  In the WW2 area we found an incredibly small Japanese Kamikaze aircraft.

A better view of the WW2 Corsair carrier deck aircraft

Top:  Lockheed T-33A Shooting Star.  Bottom: Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15bis ‘Fagot B’

One end of the hangar was filled with more modern aircraft starting with those from the Korean and Vietnam conflicts….

Mid-ground left: Lockheed Martin X-35B Joint Strike Fighter (prototype to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II). Foreground: Grummen A6 Intruder

… and then moving on the aircraft that are still in active service and those which are only just entering service.

Top left: Grumman F14D Tomcat. Top right:  Lockheed Martin X-35B Joint Strike Fighter (prototype to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II). Bottom: McDonnell F-4S Phantom II

In a carrier aircraft themed corner there was the amazing F14 Tomcat (star of the film Top Gun) and the older, now retired, F4 Phantom both looked mean and purposeful.  Beside them was a bang up to date F35 Joint Strike Fighter, the VSTOL variant that British and USMC are equipping themselves with.  We found it amusing to think that the prototype of the RAF and USMC’s newest aircraft is already a museum piece!

WWI Aircraft.  Top left:  French Caudron G-4 bomber; Bottom right: SPAD XVI

In a side hall of the large hangar we wound the clock back to WW1 and the period when aviation really began.  There were some fine examples of those wood and canvas WW1 machines.

Left and top right: Concorde; Bottom right Stits SA-2A Sky Babyunder the wing of the only surviving Boeing 307 Stratoliner ex-Pan Am Clipper Flying Cloud

Completing the circuit of the aviation hangar we saw one of the largest exhibits, the iconic Concorde Mach 2 passenger aircraft.  And from the largest to the smallest; close by Concord were a variety of small home-build aircraft, the smallest of which  was a tiny red and white biplane.  We initially thought that the wings still needed to be attached but reading the information panel it was clear that the aircraft was designed to have tiny stubby wings, even if it did make it look like it should be in a cartoon.

Top left: De Havilland Canada DHC-1A Chipmunk Penzoil Special;
Top right: North American P-51C Mustang Excalibur III; Bottom:  Nemesis

Air racing speed machines and aerobatic aircraft filled another corner of the hangar, including a Chipmunk, the aircraft I learned to fly in, albeit with a larger engine for better aerobatics.

Space hangar with Space Shuttle Discoveryin pride of place

We would have felt that we had got our monies worth from just visiting the main hangar but there was a lot more to see in the adjoining Space Hangar.  The largest exhibit there is the Space Shuttle Discovery.  Originally the museum was home to the Space Shuttle Enterprise(technically an ‘Atmospheric Test Vehicle’ since it had never been in orbit).  When the shuttle programme came to a close the museum bid for a shuttle that had actually been into space hence Discoveryhas been the centrepiece here since 2012 and Enterpriseis now at the Intrepid Air and Space Museum instead.

Mercury Capsule 15B Freedom 7 II

Of particularly relevance for us, because we were just about to see the film First Man, was one of only 2 surviving Mercury Capsules which played such a significant role in America’s part of the 1960s space race.

Hanging above Discovery is a first-generation tracking and data relay satellite

Whilst the Space Hangar is dominated by Discovery the more we looked the more space exhibits seem to appear. Suspended from the gantries we saw an impressive array of communication, weather and observation satellites as well as a ‘Manned Manoeuvring Unit’ (a propelled spacesuit for extravehicular activity) and, to the side, many examples of military space hardware – intracontinental ballistic missiles, TLAMs, drones and satellite destroying missiles.

All in all we thought that it was a fabulous museum.  I probably would have enjoyed just a little more information on each exhibit but having to read all of those information boards would have meant that we probably would have never got around the museum in a day.  As it was we really only touched the surface, doing a quick sweep around the exhibits.  It’s a hugely impressive collection of aircraft from such a wide span of eras and genres.  It made for a grand day out for a couple of aviation enthusiasts!

Udvar-Hazy Aerospace Museum, Dulles, Virginia, USA