First a hangar of experimental aircraft and test vehicles for design purposes.......



The plane on the right above being the Short SB5 where they had a sort of Ikea plane where they could change the tail type and wing type when they felt like it to see which worked best to allow a better final production design.

I was totally surprised to see the TSR2 here, I thought that they were all destroyed when the contract fell through. Australia had pre-ordered a few but changed that order to the USA F111 and that loss of the order plus the mounting cost of the way-ahead-of-its-time plane meant that it was canned. Another visitor told me he also thought that they had all been destroyed and all the patterns and jigs destroyed as well. An amazing plane that would still have been very effective even now many years later........



Lots more in there, but we'll move on to the hangar with operational planes used at various stages in the past,
here's an oldie, a Sopwith Pup.......



The oldest Spitfire in the world. The Spitfires were the glamour plane of the Battle of Britain but there were far more Hurricanes and they did more work, but the Spitfire just looked nicer and evidently was a joy to fly......



In a fit of toy inspired madness, the TV presenter James May made a full size Airfix kitset Spitfire and here it is preserved forever, even the dummy James May that fits in the cockpit is here on the chair. The wing above the plane belongs to a Comet jet airliner............



In a large purpose built building is the "Cold War collection", an amazing muddle of planes of the era all over the place and also hanging from the ceiling. Too hard to photograph individual planes as they are all a bit too close to each other, amazing to wander in amongst it, even if not a bit interested in planes. Also ballistic missiles and models of atom bombs and all that sort of stuff lying around......



A Victor bomber, the missions on the side that look like petrol bowsers means that is the total number of air to air refueling tasks it did.....



I think that's enough planes for now, there's hundreds more images but they can be used later to bore someone else. Oh yes, besides RAF planes they had a bunch of enemy planes of the various eras, even things like a German V1 flying bomb and a V2 rocket.

Next on to the totally confusing Shrewsbury, we got lost there in 1983 and basically did the same again today, anyway we did manage to park in town and wander around for a bit then successfully escape later.

Again more old buildings, seems a peaceful town and more like old England, not like London where it is all foreigners.....






An old gate to a courtyard (from the courtyard side), a plaque says it was built in 1610.......



That's enough for now, next the fun drive home, rain again on the way.......