A trip to the National Museum of Flight - East Fortune Airfield, Scotland

Its a public holiday here in the UK today, so no work for us :). We made the most of it and visited the Scottish Museum of Flight - a place we've never been before. Its about 40mins from where we live, to the east of Edinburgh.

They have quite a few historic planes including a Concorde, which is pretty cool. The view above is what greets you when you walk in the doorway of the first hangar - pretty impressive !

I was quite surprised to find out that only 20 Concorde aircraft were ever built, with only 14 of them going into commercial service. This one was G-BOAA. It flew from 1975, and was operated by British Airways until its last flight in 2004 when it came to the museum.

You could go onboard the Concorde - its very cramped with only 4 seats across in the cabin. Above is a pic of the cockpit, which was quite impressive. It looked quite old fashioned compared to todays modern cockpits though !

The museum is setup at East Fortune Airfield, which is an old airfield from the second world war. It is well preserved, with the majority of buildings dating from that period. The museum covers pretty much the whole of the airfield, with a number of hangers and buildings that you can visit, with varying displays.

The pic above is from the place where they used to maintain and pack the parachutes. I found it really interesting. They used to have to hang them up for 48 hours after use, to dry, etc. Then fully inspect them on that 40 foot table, before carefully packing them. There was also an old singer sewing machine at one side where they could fix them up !

Above was another of the larger planes they have that you can enter, a De Havilland Comment 4C. This was originally owned by the Royal Airforce, before then being bought and operated commercially by Dan-Air, until the 1980s.

Above is the historic Avro Vulcan Bomber. These used to carry the British Nuclear deterrent. They were being used into the 80s. I have seen one flying before - they move so slow it looks like it will just fall out of the sky. Quite a large plane, although thats not easy to tell from this pic.

The displays were quite well grouped in the various buildings; modern commercial craft, older commercial craft and military. There was also a nice building which had various things like simulators, and displays set-up to show how things like lift, etc work - basically explaining the science of flight.

The item above was an old bomb from around the time of the first world war (or just after) - quite mad to see it - this one was rather large - at around 1600 lbs !

The red plane above is a Hawk T1, which is an aerobatic plane used by the famous red arrows - the British flying display team.

I loved the plane above - look at those curtains ! Its a de Havilland Dragon, and was a commercially operated bi-plane flown here in Scotland !

They had quite a few jet fighters - the grey one above is a Panavia Tornado, with the brown one being a SEPECAT Jaguar.

And the one above is a Czechoslovakian built version of a MiG-15 ! Considered to be a very advanced and capable plane during its time.

I cant remember what plane the chap above was on, but I really liked it as a decal !!! A tiger with a dagger - thats pretty hardcore !

The plane above was quite beautiful, and I was surprised to find out that it was a Scottish built plane. Its a Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer, which were built at Prestwick during the 1950s. I had no idea that we had ever built planes in Scotland.

And I never expected to see the plane above. Its a German Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet rocket fighter from World War 2 - the fastest plane during world war 2. According to the display, its performance wasnt great - but its quite a historic plane, considering it was the first ever rocket fighter jet.

Hawker Harrier jump jet above ! There really was a ton to see - it was bigger than I expected. We went round fairly quickly, and it still took us a good few hours - you could easily spend the best part of a day there.

Bristol Fairchild Bolingbroke above (I think unless I've mixed it up !). We really loved it, and it was great to see something new in the area. We'll definitely go back at some point - well worth the trip ! And our daughter really loved seeing a Concorde for the first time (and getting to go inside). What a great day !