Our October trip took us, with some trepadation, around the M25. Situated in the grounds of Salisbury Hall near London Colney, the museum has a wide range of planes many designed on site and built at the nearby Hatfield factory.
Geoffrey de Havilland started designing aircraft back in the early days of flight with his earliest attempts looking more like the Wright brothers efforts than modern planes. With innovative designs like the Gipsy Moth, his company settled down to produce reliable and safe air transport.
The Comet (no, not the airliner) was very successful in an air race from London to Australia with three of the 5 planes produced taking part in the race.
Many of the early planes were constructed from wood - typically plywood - and they used innovative techniques to bend the wood to form the required shapes. Weight was an issue and they adopted a sandwich of thin plywood either side of a sheet of balsa wood. The end result feels a bit like one of those pink wafer biscuits - almost floating on air but strong.
The Mosquito light bomber was designed to be faster than any other plane in regular military use with a top speed exceeding both the English and German fighters - it was only with the early jets that it was beaten. Built of wood covered with Irish linen, it had very few guns and relied on its speed to escape damage. However it was a formidable bomber being able to carry a 4000lb bomb - the same as the much heavier and slower American B17 bombers.
Moving into the post war era, they returned to building passenger planes and introducing jet engines. These came together in the Comet airliner which, being on the cutting edge of technology, suffered a number of accidents due to metal fatigue around the window openings.
They continued to create new passenger planes as they became part of BAE with the 146 being a very popular small jet plane suited to smaller airports.
We had a really good visit with an interesting guided tour and then fish and chips for lunch. Definitely going to be a location to visit again - perhaps taking friends so we can display our new found knowledge!