RAF Museum

 

RAF Museum

VO
Calling Squadron Leader Mum: if you're junior top guns are bored being grounded, then Drops Away! Time to navigate to Hindon, London. Tally ho!

IV
This is the Royal Air Force Museum which was opened in 1972, but the site it occupies goes back much longer than that, and it's one of the places where flying started in Great Britain. We have a huge variety of aircraft here, some from the very earliest days of flying through to a full sized replica of the Eurofighter Typhoon. Our Sunderland flying boat in the back of the Britain hall is a huge aircraft, and we've rigged it up so that people can go inside and experience what it was like to fly inside an aircraft of that era.

VOX
Well basically, its probably one of the best museums of its kind in the world. There are all sorts of aviation museums but this deals specifically with, mainly with World War 2 and the Battle of Britain and as such it's one of the best of its kind.

IV
It's a very exciting place to come into, the airplanes themselves are dramatic, but we also have a big interactive area where you can touch and try the exhibits to find out the science behind flying. Many of our visitors are ex-RAF, of course, and they come to see the exhibits which they knew in earlier days, but we also attract an enormous number of people, they come from all over the world, and many families and young children come too. Admission is free to the museum and I'm sure that helps, but there's lots of things for a whole family to do here at the museum.

FATHER
Well, I'm ex-RAF so obviously I've heard about the museum. I've been once before myself, and I thought I'd take the opportunity, we're in London, so I'd  come and bring my son Peter.

SON
I like it because I don't really know a lot about the RAF and all that. All I really know is about the fighter jets, I don't know about the world war 2 planes and stuff, so I like it. So I can learn a bit.

FATHER
Yeah, I think it's really important there is a museum like this, so we can trace back the history of the RAF, and now the RAF is getting smaller, its good. You know, we can see what's happened and where we can go to in the future.