Flugzeugausstellung Hermeskeil

It was pooring rain on Sunday so Fabi and I decided to go for a drive to a mainly outdoor airplane museum.  Our mutual love of airplanes is great...

My boss used to be a mechanic for the air force and worked on the Starfighter, a supersonic nuclear bomber, which is pictured below.  Every week he remembers funny or interesting stories about his time in the air force.  It was nice to see the plane that I have spent hours at work talking about and looking at.

The museum had lots of engines and turbines cut apart so you could see them.  I enjoyed it immensely and thought about boring Fabi to death with information about them:

We got to look at and inside some really old planes. It made it really clear to me why people used to be afraid of flying:

The Super Constellation, that I have also heard a lot about:

According to my boss, amateur historian and engineered transport enthusiast, this is the same Super Constellation used by the US to spy on Russia during the Cold War.  At one point in time, the German Chancellor was invited to Moscow to see the return of POWs.  The US decided this was a great chance to spy, so they swapped the nose-cone of the plane out with one that had cameras.  Because of international law, the airplane of a diplomat is protected from certain seizure and searches.

So along the way, the pilots experienced "technical difficulties" that caused them to veer of course and conveniently over points of interest.  The USSR officials were suspicious but the pilots acted like they had no choice.  When they landed, the Soviets were suspicious and wanted to search the plane.  The German diplomat (who had been drinking a lot on the flight) distracted them and fought them off.  But the pilots realized that they were going to lose the argument and came up with a story.  Because the flight was Lufthansa, an airline, they had to go back to Germany and do business, they couldn't just simply keep a plane around while there was official business.  So the pilots took off and went right back to the hangar, where the original nose was put back in.

To appease the Soviets, they flew the same plane back to the USSR and let it be inspected. They did such a good job that the swap was never discovered.

This is what I learn at work.

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I liked being able to see a lot of European and USSR aircraft I had never seen in person.

This helicopter was my favorite as a kid:

And this one is now my new favorite:

This massive helicopter is big enough, and strong enough, to fit my childhood favorite inside.

After exploring for an hour or so we went to the local cafe, which happened to be inside of a Concord:

 ... I probably should of taken a picture of the outside...

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I also made apple pie as a thank you for the awesome sweater a co-worker knitted for me.  It tasted OK.