Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre (again)

Today was icky weather (icky for us Hawke's Bay ppl, maybe not for ppl used to things like water falling from the sky....) and we decided to head over to Omaka to go see the Aviation Heritage Centre as we enjoyed it so much last time we were here.  And now they have a WWII exhibit as well as the WWI one, so obviously we went to see both.  And can I just say if you love biplanes like I do then you will be in biplane heaven in the WWI exhibit :) so many pretty biplanes, and some not so pretty ones but they are still cool cos they are biplanes and therefore just are.  Have decided when I win lotto I am going to build myself some biplane Squadrons, maybe many of them (though I will refuse to call them a Group even if I get that many cos that is a dumb name).  Definitely think the world would be a better place with more biplanes in it :)

Even learnt a few things, turns out reading the stuff they put around the place is actually informative, who woulda thought lol.  Didn't read a lot of the WWI stuff cos read that last time, but one of the things I don't remember from last time that I did read this time was by the display of poppies and it turns out that purple poppies are for the animals (mainly horses) that lost their lives in a war so I think I might start wearing one of those as well as a red one round Anzac Day.  Also read some of the WWII stuff, and have a book or two to look for now.  Discovered that the Soviets let females fly and fight and so there are a couple females I now will look into a bit more, as well as the Night Witches which were a flying team of females, and yes I got the t-shirt hehe.  Also learnt that way more Soviets soldiers died than I ever thought, which is rather sad.  Also relearnt that I would suck in a war cos I am not a fan of being 'bombed' even if that bombing is just loud noises and a slightly vibrating room, and I know actual bombing would be way worse hence the me sucking at war.

Anyhow it was a good day, mostly just chilling and driving with some exploring and wandering around looking at planes :) nothing to complain about there :)

Just so you guys have an idea of the 'delightful' weather we had

WWI Exhibit

The poppy wall (each panel has a purple poppy on it)

A selection of my fav biplanes and scenes

Yes I even found a triplane that I thought looked rather cool

WWII Exhibit

This jigsaw looked a little horrible to do, check out the shape of the pieces...

Spitfire pic for Doffy

See even in WWII they knew that biplanes were cool hehe

This is Lydia (or Lilya) Litvyak, Female Fighter Ace and Hero of the Soviet Union (as her info card says), she's one of the ones I am going to look into more 

This is from the final scene which was real cool, spent a while trying to get the perfect picture (which I didn't get), one of the info cards also talked about planes that were crashed in remote locations and what the efforts have been with regards to salvaging, restoring etc. and that was rather interesting as well.