The Flying Heritage Collection has been housed at Paine Field since 2008. They are now planning to expand their programs by engaging in more educational activities and tours, working with flight simulators and come up with some games for the younger visitors.
The museum is owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Inside you can find various vintage military aircraft and weaponry, tanks and antiaircraft equipment. The plane collection includes some very rare pieces and most of them can still fly.
Graff enjoyed touring the 25 people in his group. He walked them around the two hangars of the museum and talked to them about each of the pieces displayed. Among the 25 were children as young as 11 and others in their 90s.
The German Focke-Wulf 190 A-5 fighter was found in the woods near Leningrad, where its pilot crash-landed during the Second World War.
Charlotte Lomholt, mother of 11-year-old twins Victor and Oscar Lomholt, admitted that her kids are more informed about planes than she is and that they certainly know better than her, the Herald Net reports.
“I’ve liked them for a long time, probably four years. He [Oscar] just started liking them,” said Victor, while Oscar continued, “approximately six months ago.”
According to the museum’s reports, about 80 to 90 percent of the visitors are men between 35 and 55 years old. Graff’s plan is for children and parents to experience flying an IL-2 Shturmovik on an Xbox, with the plane parked just a few feet away from them.
Elden Williams, 91, went along on the tour. He used to fly strategic reconnaissance missions during the Second World War. In 1966, after he retired from the Air Force, he started working as a pilot and businessman at Paine Field. He is also a good friend of the museum. He believes to have flown over 232 different aircraft during his life, including some of the planes displayed in the museum.
For him, the Bf 109s were the scariest ones as they weren’t easy to fly at low altitudes. “I was worried about stalls,” said Williams.
The Curtiss JD-4D “Jenny,” was a First World War plane, used from 1918 and which did not have breaks but just a tail skid that helped stop the plane when it was landing on unpaved airfields.
Women pilots once flew the open-cockpit Soviet Polikarpov U-2/PO-2 during the night raids on German troops, which earned them the nickname Nachthexen, or “Night Witches.”