…in more ways than one.
This picture was taken yesterday in the Tillamook Air Museum, which was once the Tillamook Naval Air Station between 1942 and 1944, if memory serves correctly. (Yes, that Tillamook, the place where they make the cheese… and my jokes got cheesier as we got closer – until we saw this HUGE building that said, “AIR MUSEUM” from about ten miles away… …Skip the cheese factory and go see this – my wife and I and our 9 year old got in for under $20 – kids under 5 are free. Ooops – locked the keys in the van too - $65 for a locksmith… still, pretty cheap for a Sunday…)
All of the airplanes on display are not only airworthy, but they take them out and fly them periodically. There they sit, oil pans underneath the big radials, some with low tires and greasy finger prints on the props. Grit and grime and all, it looked and felt like a real hangar – as opposed to the pristine Evergreen Museum in McMinnville, but that’s another story. Here, they had two rules: 1) No running. 2) Please don’t turn the props – it makes the engines leak oil – (No Kidding…). What a treat to walk around and under these beautiful fire-snorting behemoths…! …with “my girls” no less!
The Airplane shown (again by memory) is/was a Grumman FM-2 Wildcat (not to be confused with the larger F6F Hellcat or some other similar variants).
The “Hangar” is one of the largest clear-span wood structures in the world and contains more unique vintage aircraft than I want to type out here.
I believe that the distracting nose cone in the left is a DC-3, but such notables as a P-38, Me 109 (Spanish variant), a Cessna 180 that was first to the North Pole and an old Bellanca with available floats and skiis (pictures another day?).
I was embarrassed to learn later that my wife was mildly amused by my tearing up (OK - a little) when they fired up the B-17 and taxied off with some lucky passengers for a scenic flight around the patch. (What can I say, it was all that smoke in my eyes…?) They planned to fly their Japanese “Oscar” today along with the P-38. I ran out of money though, so I came back to work instead. Noble, huh?
I told them how much I appreciated being able to afford to bring the whole family to this, and I wished I could have gotten a shot in the cockpit of some of those monsters for $20; but I did take lots of pictures, maybe I’ll share if they turn out… (My wife did the “retro” editing on this for me… …did I say that I loved her already?)
