More Rain Than We’ve Had All Year

This is little more than a thinly veiled excuse to talk about an air show, or what would have been an airshow if it didn’t rain so hard all weekend. The beautiful Jaguar XK-120 pictured belongs, I presume, to the owners of the Military Aviation Museum in Virginia Beach, VA. At the time of my visit in March, parked along side was a daily driver looking MG Midget, which made me wish I had brought a catalog.

I’ve been getting an earful about my too infrequent visits to our East Coast facility, so I decided to pay a return visit last weekend. And what do you know, they happened to be having an airshow the same weekend. Imagine that. As long as I’m in VA, may as well visit the show. After all, when was the last time anyone has seen an Avro Lancaster bomber, a de Havilland Mosquito, a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, and a Messerschmidt 262 jet replica flying at the same show. Answer: probably never.

Avro Lancaster, belonging to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

The Mosquito and the Helldiver are the only examples of each flyable in the world today. The Lancaster is one of two, and the only one in North America, and the 262, though a replica, is none the less also the only example in the Americas. Adding in the remainder of the museum’s fleet, I can’t think of any place else I’d rather be – until the rain hit.

1944 de Havilland Dragon Rapide

We’ve all had the experience. Planning and anticipation meet atmospheric conditions. The show was a washout, and I shall have to wait another opportunity to see all these incredible historic aircraft. We did get to see a few interesting pieces, including a de Havilland Dragon Rapide, which has been restored in the colors and trim of a Royal Guard Rapide which was flown by Edward, Prince of Wales in the middle 1930s. An American AT-6 trainer was giving rides all day, so I had plenty of opportunity to practice my photographic skills while hoping for the skys to clear.

Current planning has me scheduling another visit to the museum, I mean Moss Virginia, next May. That Midget still needs a Moss catalog after all, and as I kept telling folks at the airshow, they had more rain in a weekend than we had in CA all year. Certainly that can’t happen again. Can it?

Shoot a million pictures and one of them is bound to come out OK.