Museums: The UDVAR-HAZY Center

Anyone traveling to Washington, DC, should take the time to head west to Chantilly, Virginia (near Dulles International Airport), and visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, which opened in 2003. Affiliated with the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, this museum, in a massive, 760,000-square-foot hangar-like structure, features many rare and special aircraft and spacecraft—from the earliest days of flight to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird to the space shuttle “Discovery.” Of special interest is the B-29 “Enola Gay” Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Several other immaculately restored WWII aircraft are also on display—a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, Curtiss SB2C-5 Helldiver, Grumman F6F Hellcat, Grumman F8F Bearcat, Lockheed P-38J Lightning, Martin B-26 Marauder, North American P-51C Mustang, Northrop P-61C Black Widow, Republic P-47D Thunderbolt, and many others. German aircraft include a Focke-Wulf Fw 190, Dornier Do 335A-1 “Pfeil,” Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet, and parts of a Horten Ho 229 “Flying Wing,” to name but a few. Japanese aircraft in the collection include a Kawanishi N1K20Ja Shiden Kai (“George”), Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu (“Nick”) [caption id="attachment_49867" align="aligncenter" width