(Also there’s a wonderful freeware scenery for MSFS 2020, and plenty of WWII hardware.)
I have always envied the chaps who could just stroll over the road from Cambridge and experience all the (ongoing) stuff at Duxford.
So we bent the travel schedule to fit this in, spending half a day there.
No flying because it rained!
Watch on youtube.comNo matter, there is so much to find on the site.
Because the airfield was operational in the Battle of Britain, it has real authority for its exhibits.
One of these is an audiovisual restoration of the ops room as it was on 15th September 1940, “Battle of Britain Day”.
Inside, the comms radios play transcripts of scrambling aircraft at 14:05 on the day.
The sector controller was Group Captain Alfred Basil Woodhall. (And there’s a Kiwi connection – he retired to Dunedin, where he died in 1968.)
Watch on youtube.comThey chattily use first names, “Douglas” is Douglas Bader who led a Hurricane Wing out of Duxford.
He famously was a proponent of the Big Wing concept, assembling a large number of fighters in an aggressive formation north of London, to pounce on the Luftwaffe.
You do get a real sense of the times – urgency and tension, yet calmly going about the business.
So glad to have experienced this iconic airbase, so much to do and see, and importantly, a live airfield with all that goes with it.
