Fri. Apr. 12 Day 92

After breakfast we walked over to the Air Museum because there is a path right from the RV Park to it.  It’s about a 10 min walk from the RV right to their door.  We got there at 10, and left at 5 PM.  I saw the Spruce Goose, (Howard Hughes giant 8 engine flying boat, built entirely of birch and canvas) which is amazingly huge seen  up close.  I took pictures of everything. They have a lot of very neat WW II planes – the P51 Mustang, the Corsair, a Messerschmitt ME 109, the jet Messerschmitt developed in 1945, a Spitfire, a P38 Lightning, a B17 Flying Fortress that you could go into, and many more, it was fascinating! When talking with the Docent at the B17 I learned some neat things,  - the wings of the B17 were partly covered in canvas to save weight and to repair them, DUCT tape was invented;  the expression “the whole nine yards” comes from the fact that the 50 calibre machine guns could only have limited ammunition, again for weight reasons, and the gunners had to use short bursts, therefore, the ammo belt that fed the machine guns was 9 yards long so if they ran out of ammo, they had shot, “the whole 9 yards”. They also said the 8^th Air Force daylight bombing raids almost came to an end because of huge losses, (a third of the aircraft on each mission).  At that time, they had no fighter escort that could go the distance, then, they finally got the P38 and especially the P51 Mustang which could out fly the Messerschmitt. The B17 was a very sturdy aircraft and made it home with its crew after being very badly shot up.  There were some paintings in the museum that depicted the real incidents.   Besides the museum displays and aircraft we saw 2 Imax movies each—all to do with flying.  I will post pictures of some of the aircraft we saw.  After we got back to the RV, Sheila made her Casserole Italiano--delicious as usual.