For aviation enthusiasts, Washington, D.C., is tops, offering not only the world’s largest aviation museum, the Udvar-Hazy Center, located near Washington International Dulles Airport, but the world’s most visited aviation museum, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.
If your preference is outer space, you’ll find that here, too. Scientists at the Goddard Space Center (www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard) manage the one-of-a-kind Hubble Space Telescope, which has taken more than 750,000 photos of the cosmos since 1990. Located in nearby Maryland, Goddard, which is next door to the College Park Aviation Museum, is the oldest continuously operating airport anywhere.
If your heart soars when you hear the thunder of airplane engines, this is the place for you, too. According to the International Council of Air Shows, www.airshows.org, an estimated 10 to 20 million people go to an air show every year. Two of this country’s biggest and best occur annually near Washington, D.C.
Following is more information about some of these places and events — nearly all of which are free — and a little story about two brothers from the Midwest whose passion for flight started it all.
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS’ LOGBOOK. Wilbur and Orville Wright, built their plane, the Wright Flyer, in the back of their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. They looked for information in libraries and wrote the Smithsonian in Washington for information about American flight experts. Today, at the U.S. Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/index.html, it’s possible to look at correspondence they had with their families right before their historic flight. You can also don white gloves and hold the logbook that was aboard that famous flight on Dec. 17, 1903, in Kitty Hawk, N.C. That’s when the Wright Flyer, with Orville at the controls, stayed aloft 12 seconds and traveled a distance of 120 feet in the world’s first powered, sustained and controlled manned flight.
LINDBERGH’S “SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS” AND BUZZ ALDRIN’S SPACESUIT. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington, www.nasm.si.edu, is the size of three square blocks and has more than 9 million visitors every year from around the world. Among its displays are many firsts — the original Wright brothers’ plane, the “Spirit of St. Louis,” the X-1 rocket plane that broke the sound barrier and the Apollo 11 spaceship that landed on the moon. Along with its numerous original planes and exhibits, it’s kid-friendly, too. The last time we were there we happened to walk by two side-by-side flight simulators. We could see the faces of the teenage girls through the glass and got a little disoriented just watching them shake this way and that. But when their tumultuous ride was over, they casually sauntered out as if flight school might be in their future.
THE “ENOLA GAY” AND ROCKET ENGINES. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy displays some of the thousands of space and aviation artifacts that can’t fit in the museum on the National Mall. Opened in December 2003 on the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight, it has 127 aircraft, 143 large space artifacts and more than 1,500 smaller items. Among the planes are the sleek black SR71, fighter jets from around the world and the controversial four-engine B-29, the “Enola Gay,” that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima in 1945. The Space Shuttle Enterprise is here, too, along with cruise missiles and rocket engines.
THE FIRST U.S. AIRMAIL AND A 1924 HELICOPTER. The College Park Aviation Museum, www.pgparks.com/places/historic/cpam, is a neighbor to an airport that’s been operating since 1909, nearly as long as the history of flight itself. In fact, the Wright Brothers had their only flying school at this airfield. Lots of firsts happened here, including the first Army aviation school and the first U.S. airmail service from College Park to Philadelphia to New York. Currently on display in the museum, is a helicopter that achieved 15 feet in altitude in 1924. Among the many workshops available for kids is one to build model rockets. A new interactive exhibit simulates the Wright brothers’ experience with cockpit hand controls and visuals that lasts three minutes. That’s 15 times longer than the original 1903 flight.
BLUE ANGELS AND BLACK DAGGERS. The two primary air shows that occur every year in the Washington, D.C., area are both at military bases. One is Naval Air Station Oceana’s 2006 three-day air show in Virginia Beach, www.oceanaairshow.com, a little more than three hours from D.C. by car. It runs Sept. 8-10 this year. Along with a salute to 60 years of the Blue Angels, this air show features the British Red Devils, aerobatics, nighttime flying, pyrotechnics, even a fireworks show. The USA Black Daggers will perform precision parachute jumps and a jet truck will spew smoke and flames onto the field.
The other air show in the area occurs every May at Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles from Washington, public.andrews.amc.af.mil/jsoh. It, too, runs for three days. This year’s schedule included the Blue Angels as well — this precision-flying team is scheduled at 68 air shows this year alone. The 2006 show also featured the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team, an F117 Night Hawk flyby, the Canadian Snow Birds and a mass jump by the 82nd Airborne that filled the sky.
