Air and Space ,Washington DC

The penultimate week of our trip at Washington DC and staying with Clyde and Glenda .

Every Boys dream to visit the Smithsoniam museums and especially the Air and space museums in both DC and at Dulles airport.

Yesterday by myself I went to the airport and spent the day at this gigantic display of air and space technology.

The facility was initially to house the Space shuttle Discoverer , This huge aeroplane was used to service the Space station and was put into space on the back of what must have been a a massive rocket,

I joined a guide who took us through the history of flight from the Wright Bros to the B29 Enola Gay that dropped the two A Bombs on Japan that brought to a finish the Pacific war in 1945.

I Learnt some stuff I did nor know, One that the specific B29 Super Fortress was especially built for this task as the standard B 29 , s had problems with overheating and the rear carburettors would sometimes vapourise or even catch fire, I found that these engines had to have some cylinders replaced every 25 hours and total rebuild every 75 hours. The engines in these planes had the new fuel injection systems that were reliable and every part of these planes were to be checked for any possible defect .

Also as these engines were mainly built out of Magnesium when they did catch fire it caused a catastrothropic fire situation .

Also learnt that the the effect of the first Bomb at Hiroshima did not cause any change of heart the second bomb was dropped a few days later which was a different plutonian type bomb and as the proposed target area , a military target, could not be seen visiably.( On Trumans specific order even though the target could be seen by radar) the second option Nagasaki city was chosen but the planes almost ran out of fuel getting back to Guam . In fact one engine cut out on the approach and a second engine cut out on the runway.

It was good to see the array of radial engines from the first ones that the cylinders revolved around the crank to the biggest Pratt and Witney 28 cylinder 7* 4 rows and producing over 4000 HP . Make a good tractor engine !!! , This engine was cut apart to see how all the gearing and intake and exhaust and the inbuilt supercharger worked . Magnificent engineering then the development of Jet engines to the ultimate rocket engines for the space programmes.