January 20, 2016
((Reminder – click on the pictures and it makes them bigger))
On the 14th, we took a drive in our trusty truck Big-Foot down to Tucson to visit the PIMA Air & Space Museum. While Dar likes airplanes and space stuff too – this was one of those things on Randy’s Bucket-List.
WOW!!!!!!!!!! 
What a great day! The weather was *Perfect* as we spent about 5 hours at the museum and saw from 1/3 to 1/2 of everything there was to see.. It’s a good thing that we purchased a membership that gets us back in anytime we want for the next 12 months.
While we saw scores of really cool airplanes and stuff, the cherry on top of the Sundae was meeting B17 Bomber pilot Richard Bushong. Richard is 92 years old and sharp as a tack. While he is a Docent now, Richard flew 28 missions within the European theater in World War 2. From there he went on to fly in Korea and lastly in Vietnam. His family told him that with all the excitement in his life, that he should write all his memories down – he took their advice and wrote his book “My Wars”. We bought a copy of that book and Richard autographed it for me.
Richard told us (the tour group) a couple of his stories. We were all transfixed and Richard’s time-machine brought us back to 1944 as he recalled the mission he had flown on January 13th. What a treat and honor to meet this man. A hero in three wars!
A couple of pics below complete the visual for the following story. This airliner was donated to the museum. The only hitch was that the museum would need to come and fly it back. The pilot called in as he was almost home and reported that he thought he blew a spark plug somewhere along the line, but the power was sufficient to continue the flight. Upon closer inspection when he landed, it waqs found that he didn’t blow a spark plug, but a JUG! (Cylinder assembly). The aircraft was landed and rolled into the museum as you see it here.
The pictures below are me standing along side of a B-58 Hustler Supersonic Bomber – an amazing plane that reportedly cost a fortune to maintain as it took 13 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight. The second pic is of me standing underneath one of 13 SR-71 Blackbird high altitude reconnaissance plane that could fly in excess of 2100 MPH. Both planes are in the top 5 of my all time favorite planes.
There were a number of Russian MiG fighters there. As I understand it, the US Government bought 21 MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters from the country of Moldova in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of rogue states like Iran. Most were dismanteld but a few, such as the one Dar is showing off below, remain. Also shown below is a Russian Mi-24D Helicopter.
Below are three pics of a B-52 Bomber that was outfited to carry the NASA X-15 Rocket-Plan aloft. You can see the mount under the right wing. Look closely at the hash marks on the fuselage of the B-52. These are actually silhouettes of the X15 plane. The angled marks indicate the Altitude record attempt missions while the horizontal marks are representative of missions for speed record attempts.
We go from monster planes that can fly the speed of sound multiple times over to the smallest planes in the world. The pictures below are of the Starr Bumble-Bee plane. This is the world’s smallest “manned” aircraft with a wing-span of just over 6’
Then there was the BD5J MicroJet – this one was flown in the James Bond movie “Octopussy”. I knew this plane was small, but wow – I had no idea that it was this small… 17’ wingspan and 12’ long and would fly faster than 300 MPH!
I could post all 180 pictures I took, but that might push my capacity over the limit. I’ll leave you with just two more pictures of a couple of huge bombers (B-47 and B-36)... Visit their website at http://www.pimaair.org to see some really cool sights. I will post an update when we return for our next visit.
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