Aircraft Nose Art

[Kitsune]

Originally posted by plthijinx
sweet! do they allow you in the cockpit?

They had several "chopped up" cockpits that had all the dials and controls, but the rest of the plane wasn't there. Some of the mechinical stuff was still hooked up -- when pressing on the rudder pedals, etc, you could hear lots of internal movement.

But, alas, the ejection seats had all been disabled.

One cool thing was that you could crawl around in the wheel wells and bomb bays of the aircraft outside. I cannot convey just how massive some of these planes were up close -- the B-52 was HUGE! Having a flashlight turned out to be a good idea, as a lot of the wheel wells, cargo holds, etc, were completely dark.





"This is where death comes from." -- the bomb bay of the B-52D, which wasn't as large as I would have thought. The visible fuel tanks on this thing (when peering into the wheel wells, bomb bay, etc) and knowing that the wings were full of tanks made it very impressive.

One image I hope I captured, but have yet to locate, is the ground clearance of the gear on the end of the wings. When fueled, that gear touches the ground. When empty, the wings pick up quite a bit. To show how much the wings flex, they had the gear down on this empty B-52. Unbelievable.