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Local
residents met with enthusiasm in English military museums
[DEC.
28, 2002]
Logan County residents Nick
Woll of Lincoln and Colleen Moehle of Atlanta recently returned from
a trip to England. The purpose was to attend the rededication of
Duxford, one of the most famous air bases used by the Army Air Corps
during World War II. Both Woll and Moehle are pilots and active
members of Heritage in Flight Museum at the Logan County Airport.
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While there they also visited many
other historic aviation sites. The tour group brought them in
contact with a number of famous people, most notably former
President Bush and Prince Charles.
Duxford and other bases from World War
II were located every five to 10 miles apart. These were the
airfields from which the daylight raids on Germany originated.
Squads were composed of thousands of bombers and fighters from the
U.S. 8th Air Force.
One of the most interesting stops was the DeHavilland Mosquito Museum, which houses one of the famous British
bombers. For aviation buffs, did you know the Mosquito was built of wood?
Woll and
Moehle also visited Bletchley Park, the famous code-breaking
facility that housed the first computer ever built. At one
time there were 12,000 people were involved in its operation. It
was approximated that it was 90 percent women running the highly classified
communication system, as men were used on the battleground.
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article]
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A group of volunteers is trying to restore the computer to service.
It has thousands of vacuum tubes. The restoration will be a chore, but the
results will be spectacular.
Moehle said that meeting the people
provided a real sense of World War II from a personal perspective. The tour
lecturers had lived this experience. They were test pilots and
military personnel. To this day the people over there have a great
respect for how the United States helped them during World War II.
According to Woll, many of these former
bases have small museums similar to Heritage in Flight. Volunteers
staff most of them. People all over the world are committed to
preserving aviation history, just as our local
Heritage in Flight Museum
does.
[Curtis Fox] |
