I have always wanted to see the Spruce Goose, ever since I read a biography of Howard Hughes, Jr. So, when the camp director planned a field trip to McMinnville, OR for it, I was excited! It was impossible to get a view of all of it at once. This is the left wing.
It is a beautiful new facility. The variety of aircraft is impressive. They've stuffed a lot inside, but there are aircraft out in the middle of the fields, too!
I thought the benches to relax on were brilliant.
Although some of the amenities confused William.
This is the tail.
My tail... for perspective... :)
Thanks, Eno Brad for a great picture so you can see the fuselage.
Really? There are mechanical engineering landmarks? Cool!
You go up stairs to enter. This is looking at the left wing from the entrance.
Inside was cool to see. William is holding the information, where you can see its size compared to other aircraft.
This is where you would go upstairs to the cockpit and the seats.
We weren't allowed up there, so I got a picture of their picture of what it looks like.
This is towards the tail of the plane. Beach balls for buoyancy. Seriously!
They have it all glassed off, so you can't go play with the beach balls.
William caught sight of this B-17, and thought it was really cool.
Eno Brad bought tickets for the inside tour, which was very informative and William loved it. Can you imagine being at altitude, no insulation in the plane, and you have to man this gun?
This is where the bombs dropped from. The Norden bombsight was up front, and you entered a small hatch up front to get there from here!
The bomb bay from a different angle.
One of Eno Brad's colorful friends, Ann Danby, got to go on a B-17 ride. Her husband had been one of these ball turret bottom gunners.
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