Thanks guys, the Ju 87 was a long term project; the guy who built it is an aircraft engineer and he want's to get it ground running some time in the future - that's the plan anyway; note the absense of exhaust stacks. Its made of wood and clad in aviation grade alclad.
Gumbyk, I'm through there often since I own a house in Blenners. I'll be over for the airshow in March for certain. I'm surprised I beat you to putting pictures up here since this is your neck of the woods.
A local lad is featured in one of the displays; Major Keith Logan "Grid" Caldwell is displayed wrestling with the controls of his S.E.5a whilst standing outside of the cockpit on the port wing after colliding with an adversary. Legend has it, Caldwell managed to guide his stricken fighter over friendly territory from the wing before leaping to safety (10).
Who would have thought that the previously unheard of sight of no less than seven Fokker Dr I triplanes (albeit faithful reproductions) would take to the skies at a local airshow in the north of New Zealand's South Island? Four of the flying reproductions, including Richtofen's 425/17 are on display (11).
By far the most imaginative diorama in the museum is the Winter scene, where a hapless RFC pilot has flown his Nieuport 27 into a tree, following combat with a Siemens Schuckert D IV (12).
A few items of note from the display cases;
German flying badges; l to r; Ottoman Empire Air Service, Prussian Air Service, silver wound badge
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The coveted Blue Max.
Although outside of the time frame represented in the AHC, the cases hold priceless crockery from the German airship line DZR and from the Dornier Do X.
Wolfram von Richtofen's Luftwaffe tunic.
One of the most memorable movies about Great War fighter aces was "The Blue Max", the story of a German ace, played by George Peppard, who actually flew some of the sequences for the film, and featuring a host of reproduction flyable First World War aeroplanes. In one particular scene, Peppard flies into combat in a Pfalz D III; that very aeroplane, wearing its representative 'lozenge' camouflage effect created for the film is displayed below a movie screen, showing the ace battling it out against Currie Wot repro S.E.5as in a sequence from the film (14).
It is the 21st of April 1918. Sitting mangled and torn from the impact of a crash and the attention from the souvenir hunters that eagerly swarm around it is Richtofen's final Triplane, the bright red Dr I Nr 425/17 (13).
Displayed in an ornate frame in front of the triplane is an original cross insignia, torn from the flanks of Richtofen's mount on the day he was shot down, as depicted in the above scene.
Charles Nungesser's Nieuport 24 (15).
Halberstadt D IV (15).
Boeing built D.H.4M; this impressive machine was put into service as a mailplane and was restored by the United States Air Force Museum at Dayton, Ohio as the personal mount of Major General M.M. Patrick, Commanding General of the U.S. Air Service in 1923 (16).
I hope you've enjoyed my tour of the AHC; it's worth going every two or so years just to see if something new has been added. At the biennial Classic Fighters airshow at Omaka there is also the likelyhood of seeing one or two of the aircraft from the museum being flown.