The Seattle Museum of Flight is located adjacent to Boeing Field and several Boeing plants. In incorporates the original Boeing building, The Red Barn. This huge facility displays many airplanes from a Wright Brothers reproduction to the most modern planes.
A temporary (through February 23) exhibit highlights the work of Walt Disney Studios in their World War 2 effort. No photography allowed. unfortunately. Donald Duck featured prominently in “propaganda” films. Lightly propaganda compared to the in-your-face works from Nazi Germany. Walt had to be convinced to do the propaganda films and won the battle to make them subtle.
They also produced training films; e. g., one for Lockheed showed how to use flush rivets on airplanes.
The Studio designed logos for various units and for individual planes and ships.
It would be easy to spend all day in this exhibit, watching the films, reading about the artists, and viewing their sketches. But we only had one day, so back to looking at airplanes.
We were looking at a World War 2 era B-17. A docent pointed us to THE guy to talk to about it, a pilot who flew 35 missions in a B-17 during the war. He’s 99 now, but his memory was excellent. He said he still flies but only as a co-pilot. It was interesting to hear details of his flights, air speed, take-off procedures, and much more.
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- A small fraction of the planes to see.
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- The fuselage of a Boeing model 40B from 1925. It was made with steel tubing, wood, metal, and covered with fabric. The fabric was sewn by women in the workforce and treated for water resistance.
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- A small engine powered the machines in the early machine shop.
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- A canvas belt connected individual machines to a line shaft.
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- A Sabre Jet. This was used throughout the Korean War. In 1954 (the war had been over for a year), my aunt and uncle took me to a field near Goodyear, Arizona that had hundreds of Sabre Jets lined up. We walked up and down the lines of planes; there were no fences.
