WWII Exhibit

A friend of mine told me that our little local airport was going to host an exhibit of two aircraft used in WWII. It took some thinking for me to decide if I would take the children given the nonresistant, peace theology that I hold, but in the end, I decided to go. History is history, Josiah was interested and how many chances are there to tour an aircraft from the mid 1900s?

I convinced Jeremy to join us. I just had the feeling that at some point one of the children was going to get scared and I wouldn't be enough for everyone. I think it may have been Aliza that finally convinced him that everything is so much more fun when he comes along.

Our tour guide told us that this cockpit was the original inspiration for the Star Wars ship.

Climbing up the ladder was no problem, but when Anna realized she had to go down the ladder it was a completely different story. This was why Jeremy came along! Everyone had gone down and Anna declared she wasn't doing it. When she realized that I was going down and she really didn't have a choice, she did get herself down the ladder.

This first aircraft was a bomber. There was a hatch on the bottom of the plane where the bombs were dropped. There were empty cases, like in the picture below, lined up inside the plane.

The second plane was a plane used for shooting.

This tunnel is how the soldiers moved between gun posts. I don't like this picture of Josiah! After leaving this plane, I put my arm around his soldier. I said, you know this plane was really used in WWII? And it dropped real bombs and shot real bullets? Do you understand that those bombs and bullets were pointed at real people? And those people died? Yes. He understands.

This panel had signatures on it. Most were very faded. I'm assuming they are signatures of soldiers who flew in this plane.

After the tours of these planes, I took the children to the terminal of our little airport. They have not flown in a plane yet so I showed them the ticket counter. It was busy for our 2 gate airport. A person happened to be checking luggage which helped them understand my explanations. I showed them the gates and then from the baggage area we could see the runway. No planes were coming or going but they at least got a bit of the idea. It was a good little summer field trip!