posted 10-14-2003 11:32 AM            

I attended the 12th October 2003 Duxford Airshow - about 50 miles north of London.
Duxford is one of the sites that form the UK Imperial War Museum.

It has several large display hangars and specially built display halls where there are numerous aircraft and engines on display along with ground based military hardware.In one of the Hals I was able to go aboard Concorde, inspected the cockpit area. and view the leather upholstered seats inside the cabin area.

During the afternoon there were several flying displays by modern jets as well as older vintage aircraft including de Havilland Rapides,Spitfires and Tiger Moths - amongst others. There were a number of film based items on view including 'James Bond' car used in the latest film, the gyrocopter from an earlier Bond film and the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" flying car.

However, the items of possible space and rocket interest to myself were the German WWII V-1 missile on its launch ramp, several aircraft missiles, Polaris,Russian transportable nuclear missile and one tube section of what would have been the "SuperGun" . Other areas of interest were the Blackbird 'spy plane' ,Honest John missile and some smaller German war missiles. Another interesting exhibit was a model of a delta winged hypersonic vehicle designed by Barnes Wallis (dam busting bouncing bomb inventor) looking very much like NASA's early design for the NASP 'Orient Express' vehicle.