Daily Life: Wings of Freedom Exhibit

Today, my friend Pierre and I went up to the Wings of Freedom exhibit at Moffett Federal Air Station in Mountain View, California. It was an exhibit of three classic WWII era aircraft – a P-51D Mustang*, a B-17 bomber and a B-25 bomber. Moffett Field is actually just down the street maybe two or three miles from the festival we went to yesterday, so it was a trip into familiar territory. We got there about 10:00 and watched the B-17 coming in for a landing and then the P-51 taking off. Once they had completed their flights (you could actually buy a flight on either aircraft, though the price was decidedly not cheap, the funds do go to support the aircraft and the exhibit). It was well worth the trip and I’ve posted my “Best Of” pictures over on Flickr.

You can see them at this link.

Best of Wings of Freedom 2009 Moffett Field

They include a picture of me standing in from of the “Witchcraft” – if I look wilted, I am. It was one of the last pictures taken at the end of our visit and it was hot (probably mid-nineties there on the on the tarmac at Moffett). Wings of Freedom is a traveling exhibit that is circling the country in various incarnations. If it comes near you I would definitely recommend it as it is very much a piece of living history and a relative bargain.

Then, to dodge the heat of the day, I circled home, ordered a pizza, and have been spending the afternoon snacking, drinking iced tea, and watching movies. I watched an old classic that I had not seen in quite a while – “The Sand Pebbles” with Steve McQueen and Candace Bergen. It is an excellent movie and one of those classics that can be watched over and over, in my opinion.

*One of the coolest P-51 Mustang movie scenes ever is in Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun”. A young Christian Bale is a prisoner of the Japanese in China. In the scene, a long shot, a P-51 is strafing the airfield the Japanese are using forced labor to build. The young Bale runs up onto a wooden tower and watches the P-51 fly by, screaming “P-51 Mustang, Cadillac of the Skies”. It is a powerful movie and a great scene.