Dogfights over Cambridgeshire.

I went to yesterdays battle of Britain show at Duxford. There were two simulated dogfights, Spitfires and Hurricanes against Messerschmidts 109s. Then there was a dogfight of world war 1 planes. All pretty impressive stuff.

When the planes landed I was two hundred yards from a 109, black cross and all, and a symbol of evil under the cockpit. Amazingly, Hitler was an artist, the artistry of Nazi planes, uniforms, tanks etc were a work of art. Even giving speeches. How can a man, able to see beauty in art then go and destroy beautiful things?.

As always, where there are humans there is trouble, it lays waste wherever it goes. The eternal battle, that must be waged throughout the Universe, good v evil, or is it growing pains?

Even today, we fight the same battle against the dictatorial east, trying vainly to keep freedom alive.

The beast never dies. It retreats to gather strength, to attack again. Chin up, be grateful for what you have.

Tip.

Was it the 109's that had the wailing siren underneath them that screamed when it went into dive? That was a great idea to put the fear for God into people without firing a bullet,Lemmy from Motorhead said that reason that he collected Nazi memorabilia wasn't because he had right wing views but because they had great looking uniforms that oozed style and he was right but the snowflakes couldn't see that and gave him a hard time
The one thing that I can't get my head around about WW1 bi-planes was the fact that they timed the machine gun at the front to fire through the propeller when in flight,how the fcuk did they manage that in 1918,have you seen how fast the propeller goes around? It still doesn't seem possible to me even now
I've been to Duxford before and it's a great day out and if i had known that there was another air show on I probably would have made the journey down

It was the Stukas that had a siren bolted on. It did scare people, but you could hear it coming. Mind you, if you were beneath it, there was no chamce of escape.

The world war 1 dogfight was fascinating, those planes could turn on a sixpence, how they did that god only knows. Engineering is a science, how they got those gears to fire through a prop was genius. Another thing was speed, if you compared the early spitfires to the more modern ones, just before the war ended, the difference was amazing. Being slow means you were either a gifted pilot, able to anticipate, or you were a goner.

Duxford has several hangers full of ancient planes, and full of exibits, there is also a tank museum full of ww2 memorabilia, panzers, tigers etc, there is so much a day isn't enough, its open Monday to Friday, usually there is something buzzing around doing tests. The American ww2 hanger has a b52, those planes that used to bomb Vietnam, standing next to that is amazing, how that mother got in the air defies logic, its so big.

p.s, there is also an ops room used during the war, in the same condition.