Immediately after, I met up with Jenny at Seattle’s Museum of Flight at Boeing Field.
WOW! This is a great place!
Jenny had arranged for Craig, a friend of the family who is on the board of the museum, to meet us there and give us an overview. It’s an awesome place.
Craig gave us the highlights, walking us first through the Great Hall; then on to the Personal Courage Wing, a WWI and WWII hall; wrapping the tour up in the Red Barn, Boeing’s first factory building, before setting us loose.Jenny and I went first to see the outdoor commercial jets. We walked inside a supersonic Concorde passenger jet as well as a former Air Force One 707, complete with a safe to hold top secret nuclear missile launch codes, a conference room, and a dog door into the president’s state room! We also had a chance to see, up-close, the first 737 and 747 jumbo jet.
Then I went back into the Great Hall, a vast, impressive glass-enclosed structure. Many of the aircraft there are suspended from the ceiling; many are parked on the ground floor. 
It features a Blackbird reconnaissance plane (fastest plane in the world), a number of WWII and post-war fighter aircraft, as well as a variety of commercial and other aircraft. There’s also a replica of Spaceship One, just like in Oshkosh.
On to the Personal Courage Wing. It contains splendid, restored aircraft suspended or displayed creatively in scenes on the ground.
The WWII planes include a Thunderbolt, Lightning, Mustang, Spitfire, ME 109, and others; the WWI planes include the Fokker and Sopwith Triplanes (Germany’s famous ace, the Red Baron was killed, was killed in a Fokker), the Fokker Eindekker, Sopwith Camel and Pup, and a number of Nieuport aircraft. In addition, the museum has the world’s first fighter plane, an Italian Caproni monoplane from 1914, that was stored in a monastery for many years and is kept in its original condition at the museum. 
In addition to the planes, there are excellent small exhibits, videos and displays around the aircraft about the men and women who flew them, and the wars themselves. There is a particularly affecting display about trench warfare in WWI. There was also a fun exhibit about mascots. I include the a picture of the U.S. Navy identification card for “Mr. Chips.”
One total surprise, and a real treasure, is a recently donated collection of 400 scale (1/72nd) models made by one man, a surgeon, starting in the ‘90’s. These represent just about every WWII aircraft. There is a video screen that allows you to learn about each one. The models are displayed along two walls where they are easy to see up close, and I could easily have spent an hour looking at and learning about them all. There’s a picture of some of them at the Museum of Flight website, the link to which is at right.
After the WWI and II hall, I went to see the red barn, Boeing’s first aircraft factory, which the museum has transported to the site. This wooden building is meticulously restored. Exhibits in it show the ways in which aircraft were designed and manufactured in Boeing’s very early years, and also give a history of the company and its planes up through the 707 passenger jet’s development in the late 1950’s.
These are accompanied by remarkable videos about Boeing flying boats, bombers and post-war civil aircraft.
After the museum, Skip’s three daughters, Jenny, Liz and Hilary, came over for potluck dinner at Skip and Zanny’s.
Jenny’s boyfriend Rob also was there, as was Craig, who had showed Jenny and me around the museum in the morning. It was a great time, high energy with old and new friends, as you can see from the photos.
During the evening, Craig offered to fly me in his experimental plane up to the restoration center in Everett, where the museum is refurbishing my favorite airliner and the first commercial jet passenger plane, the de Havilland Comet. Unfortunately, the weather the next day was heavily overcast, and we couldn’t do it – but what an amazing opportunity!! There’s a picture of a model of the museum’s Comet below.
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