The Military Aviation Museum

While out driving on Veteran's Day, we passed the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach. We HAD to stop and we are sure glad we did. This was an excellent museum that had us exclaiming and dropping our jaws all day. http://www.militaryaviationmuseum.org/

Entry way and their dolphin. I thought the gull wings on the dolphin were very clever.

Once you pay your admission, you are greeted by a docent and an upside-down Sopwith Pup, complete with pilot and streaming scarf.

 There were so many planes to see! We are posting a few of our favorites. We took many, many more photos than we are posting. Let us bore you with them when we see you. *w*

We got to watch them prepare this plane for a flight, including watching the fueling. It was so cool to see it taxi down the grass runway and take off.

The old girl sure smokes when she is started.

A tower that they bought in the UK, tore down, labeled and reassembled in Virginia.

They actually work on planes and get them ready to fly. Almost everything we saw can be flown.

They even have a resident cat that followed us on the tour.

This hanger was originally built in Germany. They bought it, tore it down and moved it to VA to be reassembled. They had to put a new skin on it because it had sat for so long abandoned. The steel structure and doors are original. It came from Cottbus, Germany.

Original bullet holes in the doors that were put there in WWII

This was a short train track to show how they moved the bombs to the aircraft because they were to heavy.

We ended our tour looking at an Enigma machine that was used by the Germans to create coded messages.