#smithsonian hangar

[hyper-coasters]

Blue Angels. Udvar-Hazey Smithsonian Hangar, 2024.

[crj-200]

are u going to the smithsonian air and space museums? i work at a different smithsonian museum and those are SO good... air plane

yes i am!!!!!! air plane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[macgyverphotography]

When this SR-71 Blackbird was delivered to the National Air and Space Museum, it set a speed record for a flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., at 1:04:20.

[in1-nutshell]

Hi, I just recently came across your blog and I really liked it, well done, you write very well, I can't wait to read what you write next time. If I can make a request, then I would like to ask you to write the reaction of TFP Autobots and Decepticons (and maybe humans) to the fact that on one day both sides discovered the vital signals of both factions emanating from the Smithsonian museum. The Autobots arrive at the department of the museum with historical cars to find the Autobot Buddy in stasis in her altforem of the Red Cross car from the time of the First World War. And at the same time, the Decepticons arriving at the museum department with historical aircraft find the Decepticon Buddy also in stasis in his altforem of the World War One aircraft. Both Buddies were sent by their leaders at the beginning of the Cybertron war to explore new worlds suitable for the extraction of energon. And arriving on earth in 1915, they not only continued their war, but also to some extent became part of the human war until one day in 1917, they both plunged each other into stasis. I apologize in advance if there are errors or typos in the text, English is not my native language.

These Buddy's are going to be in for a shock when they figure out they had been gone for a while.

Hope you enjoy!

Bot Buddy's the Bot and Con waking up from stasis after being in WWI

SFW, Platonic, Cybertronain reader

TFP

Bot is red cross car.

Con is a red barron.

Bot is name Red Cross.

Con named Deadloop.

They were both sent to Earth to scout energon.

Once they both land on the planet they are at each other’s throats trying to claim the planet it the name of their faction. Until they realize this planet is also at war.

“You have got to be kidding me!”—Red Cross

“War seems to be following us everywhere my friend…”--Deadloop

“I’m not your friend!”—Red Cross

“We are now! We’re the only Cybertronains on this planet at war. We need to look after each other whether we like it or not!”--Deadloop

“Hmmm…”—Red Cross

Silence…

“What if we helped the good side of this war?”—Red Cross

“Don’t we have our own war to worry about?”--Deadloop

“And they’re lightyears away. I saw we help the good side win; we strike a deal for them not to hunt us down, take the energon reserves and when our sides come no one will be mad. Mission accomplished.”—Red Cross

“…Primus what am I doing… Fine! Don’t have anything better to do.”--Deadloop

After scanning random vehicles, the Cybertronains end up partnering up with Allied forces under a secret organization.

The organization made sure that not many people knew about their existence, which was fine by them.

Deadloop ended up helping arial strikes and dog fights.

It was confusing as they took the form of the infamous Red Baron, but it certainly struck fear in the hearts of the Central Power’s aerial forces thinking their Baron went rogue.

Red Cross ended up taking up learning more about organic medicine to help the troops, especially those who had just come back from the trenches.

They end up becoming good friends with each other and their fellow human companions.

Red Cross fixing Deadloop’s damaged propeller.

“You have to be more careful Loop. The supplies are low with propeller parts.”—Red Cross

Deadloop gives them a smirk.

“You should see the other guys. They’re practically in scrap metal.”--Deadloop

Red Cross shakes their helm a bit while reattaching the new propeller.

A human enters the hangar.

“How’s Deadloop Cross?”

Red Cross looks down at the nurse smiling.

“Mrs. Fowler, the propeller replacement is just about finished. How’s the Mister?”—Red Cross

She smiles a bit.

“He’s doing as good as we all are… There’s something I need to tell you two.”—Mrs. Fowler

Both look at each other before giving full attention to the nurse.

“…I’m pregnant.”—Mrs. Fowler

“…What’s pregnant?”--Deadloop

Red Cross’s optics widened.

“Your having a sparkling!? Loop! She’s having a sparkling!”—Red Cross

Deadloop looks at her wide optic.

“Congratulations!”—Red Cross

“Yeah… wow... did not expect that.”--Deadloop

The nurse looks down a bit.

“Mrs. Fowler? Is something else on your mind?”—Red Cross

“We’ve been talking, the mister and I, about making you two the godparents—”—Mrs. Fowler

Red Cross squeals a bit.

“I’ve heard about that term!”—Red Cross

They put their arm around Deadloop whose optics just grow wider.

Red Cross looks at Deadloop and they both look down at the nurse.

Deadloop kneels down and gently places a digit on Mrs. Fowler’s belly.

“Hey there tiny. This is Deadloop and Red Cross speaking, your grandparents. We can’t wait to meet ya.”--Deadloop

It would be a couple days after that news when Deadloop got shot down in no mans land. Red Cross moving to their friend trying to cover them from the shelling and the mustard gas that was clogging their vents.

The two eventually reverted into vehicle mode before going into stasis.

Us govt kept their bodies in a museum after many of the families and members of the secret unit refuses to burry them or burn them.

Now to present day…

The Autobots and Decepticon’s had recently come across two different signals coming from the museum.

Cons get there first and find the stasis signal coming from a red baron plane.

They take the plane and groundbridge out of there before the bots come.

The bots come and realize one of the signals is now gone.

But thankfully there’s one more.

The signal is coming from a car, and they take it.

After a bit of fixing the bot wakes up and is very startled to see their leader there.

Red Cross stretches a bit.

“Urgh… That hurts…”—Red Cross

They look up to see Optimus.

Their optics widened.

“Prime?! You’re here? Wait where’s Deadloop? Where’s Fowler? Where—”—Red Cross

“How do you know my name?”—Agent Fowler

Red Cross looks at Fowler with shocked expression.

“You’re not the Missus or the Mister… but they didn’t have any siblings that I know about…”—Red Cross

Red Cross looks carefully at their surroundings.

“This isn’t base camp…”—Red Cross

“It’s a good thing your sitting down then. There’s a lot you missed.”--Bulkhead

Optimus explains what happened.

Bot must sit down for a second realizing that all of their friends were dead and was once again thrusted into their own civil war.

They agree to work with them and mainly stay on base with Ratchet as their altmode isn’t suitable for the current times and a heavy limp in one of their pedes thanks to the shrapnel attack had gotten infected.

Red Cross looks sadly at Agent Fowler.

“You have her eyes… and you have his hair.”—Red Cross

“You really knew them?”—Agent Fowler

“Sure did! I met the Missus when she threw an egg at us the first day we met. That was some day.”—Red Cross

Fowler raises and eyebrow.

“An egg?”—Agent Fowler

“Yep! That little bugger gave us quite the scare first time around. Good thing I kicked it before it could hurt anyone.”—Red Cross

“…A chicken egg?”—Agent Fowler

“Chicken? No! An egg! What there’s a new word for that…”—Red Cross

Red Cross thinks for a bit.

“Oh! Grenade!”—Red Cross

“She threw a grenade!”--Miko

With cons…

Con wakes up and is ready to attack the first things they see.

Shocked to see Megatron.

They listen carefully and are slightly relief that their friend wasn’t captured.

But they are still worried for their safety now that Megatron has arrived to this planet.

There was no telling what the warlord would do to their friends.

“I expect to see you back in the sky’s at first light.”--Megatron

Deadloops propeller falls off.

“…Maybe after their not falling apart Lord Megatron?”--Knockout

Megatron nods and leaves.

Deadloop looks at Steve.

“Hey, how are the Granny’s here?”--Deadloop

“The what?”--Steve

“You know the Granny’s? Do we still have them shooting the basic blasts?”--Deadloop

“… Do you mean heavy guns?”--Steve

“Yes? That’s a Granny.”--Deadloop

“…”--Steve

[mlleclaudine]

This Chinese American Aviatrix Overcame Racism to Fly for the U.S. During World War II

A second-generation immigrant, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to receive her pilot’s license

by Susan Tate Ankeny - Smithsonian magazine, April 23, 2024

Hazel Ying Lee (right) and fellow pilot Virginia Wong (left). Courtesy of the Museum of Chinese in America, New York City

Hazel Ying Lee circled the biplane, looking for anything suspicious. Missing something on a precheck could cost you your life. She checked the engine and confirmed that no oil had collected in its lower cylinder.

Starting a Fleet biplane involved choreography. Lee grasped the propeller with one hand and pulled it backward. “Just walk it through. You don’t need to use force,” her instructor, Al Greenwood, yelled from the cockpit. She repeated the process four times; each time, she heard the click that told her she’d done it correctly. Then, with both hands on the propeller, she raised her left leg forward. Swinging it behind her for leverage, she pulled, and the unique thumping that identified the Kinner engine began.

After climbing onto the wing and into the cockpit, Lee inspected the instrument panel, starting with the fuel. The tank held close to three hours of fuel when full. If a car ran out of gas or had engine trouble, the driver could pull to the roadside. In flight, the best you could hope for was to find a good field, and quickly.

As 19-year-old Lee performed her preflight check in July 1932, Greenwood’s other training biplane, calledthe Student Prince, taxied down the runway, piloted by one of the Chinese Flying Club of Portland boys earning solo hours. Founded in 1931, Greenwood’s school trained Chinese American pilots to go to China and help defend against the invading Japanese.

These young men would become a vital part of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s stand against the invasion. As the head of China’s Nationalist government, Chiang and his party were trying to establish control in a nation divided among revolutionists, nationalists, Indigenous warlords, and a developing communist army and government. Now, Japan seemed determined to take China’s resources. Many Chinese Americans sup­ported Chiang and believed he would help China emerge from years of strife and discord.

China’s fledgling air force, with barracks and hangars still being constructed in the north, was easily defeated by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. The Chinese needed pilots. Dele­gates traveled to the United States to scout out flying schools that could teach young Chinese American pilots to fly for China. Across the country, branches of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), a group made up of local merchants and businessmen, agreed to help raise funds to train the young men.

The association was established in 1882 with the purpose of aiding and protect­ing Chinese Americans by providing assistance with housing, jobs and other issues that arose. Portland residents Chan Lam and Ting Lee made impassioned speeches to raise money for an aviation school, ultimately raising enough money to sponsor 36 local students. Chinese flight schools opened not only in Portland but also in Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities across the country. In total, around 200 Chinese American pilots would undergo training at these schools before joining China’s defense against Japan. Before a student was accepted into the program, he had to pledge his life to China, to the interests of China and to Chinese aviation. The pledge to die for China would take precedence over any personal relation­ships that might develop.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗

Greenwood had purchased the Prince exclusively for the students in his Chinese flying school. He was essentially running two businesses simultaneously. With the new school under his direction, most of his time was spent training young men for combat in China, but he continued to give private flying lessons to students like Lee.

Greenwood’s first class of 15 boys quickly became idols to Lee. For as many hours as she could spare, she watched them practice. They treated her like a kid sister, though all of them were about the same age, and good-naturedly tolerated her enthusiastic antics and questions. She was fun to have around, laughing and playing tricks on them, with a wide smile and deep-voiced wisecracks.

A 1943 photograph of Lee, then serving in the WASPs. Courtesy of Texas Woman's University Collection

Lee stands next to the Student Prince in 1932. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Lee had kept the photo of the first class that appeared in the Oregonian newspaper in January 1931. Looking like a motley crew of street urchins, the young men posed in front of the Prince, uncertain of what they were in for before Greenwood began his process of transforming them into pilots bound for war.

Lee had never been among others who shared her passion for aviation. Flying was all that Greenwood’s students talked about, and they knew as much about airplanes—and sometimes more—than experienced pilots. It was practice that they needed, practice flying. And Greenwood would provide it.

The “boys,” as Greenwood called them, proved to be able students, a little heavy on the control stick at first, but never lacking courage or a willingness to try anything. Training required ten hours of primary work and ten hours of advanced aerobatics from each student—an enormous task for one instructor. Other pilots were hired to provide instruction to the students.

Lee (in white) attends an air show in Shanghai in 1936. Public domain

Greenwood peppered his instruction with stories of his exploits, like one about his narrowest escape, to demonstrate the deadly consequences of fear. While practicing spins with a student, he’d turned the plane over at 7,000 feet and let it spin for about 5,000 feet. The student grabbed the stick, panicking, and, as a magazine article about Greenwood described it, “began to do things, all of which were wrong,” while using up nearly every one of the remaining 2,000 feet before Greenwood finally regained control—just before the wheels hit the tips of the grass. Controlling fear was essential no matter what happened in the air.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗

Born in Portland in 1912, Lee was the second of eight children born to Chinese immigrants. After she discovered her love of aviation at age 19, Lee began dressing like a flier, in baggy pants tucked into riding boots. People stared and pointed, talking behind their hands. “There’s the girl who is learning to fly.” “So foolish.” “Her poor mother.”

One evening, Lee and her friend Elsie Chang sat on the schoolyard grass in the gathering twilight, while Lee dramatically explained everything about flying, as if she were taking Chang along for a ride. Lee described what she could see while flying, how she steered the airplane, how the air made the plane rock and bounce, and all the dangers that needed to be avoided, like stalling on a landing. To Chang, it all sounded terrifying.

Lee (far left) served in the WASPs during World War II. Courtesy of Texas Woman's University Collection

Lee was such a good storyteller that Chang closed her eyes and felt the wind and the weightlessness and heard the engine and smelled the trees in the air aloft. They fell back on the grass and stared up at the darkening sky, waiting for the first star to flicker.

Lee told Chang that no other Asian American woman had a pilot’s license in the United States. She was going to be the first.

Lee counted the minutes until she could get back in an airplane, with the wind in her face and the lulling rumble of the engine to soothe her. She loved the speed, the rhythmic, percussive thump of the engine, the rush of air surrounded by the silent expanse of sky. Lee experienced a new kind of solitude. Away from her family and the tight quarters of a home filled with younger siblings, an elevator operator job where she had to try to be invisible, she was alone without any expectations or judgments. It didn’t matter that she was of Chinese descent. No one could see her race; no one could see her gender. In the sky, she wasn’t Chinese or American, man or woman, visible or invisible. She was just herself. In the sky, she felt limitless.

Lee refused to be tied to a home and children when there were more exciting things to do. She saw how conformity ruled women’s lives, offering a suffocating security in return. Women moved from their fathers’ homes to their husbands’, where their sons would have more power than they ever would. For most women, groomed to deny their own capabilities, to distrust themselves and defer to men, the decision to fly was fraught with fears, not only of flying but also of being independent. In an age when women were encouraged to stay grounded, Lee’s desire to fly was the ultimate expres­sion of individuality. A husband might insist she give up flying, and that was something she would never do.

Lee reviews her performance after a session in a Link trainer. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

If Lee could convince Greenwood and the CCBA to accept her into the next class of students training to go to China, she would sign the pledge without hesitation. To fly against the Japanese invaders would be the ultimate experience and worthy of any sacrifice. She’d die in battle fighting the enemy without any regrets. But the Chinese Flying Club, like all the related programs across the coun­try, didn’t allow women. Lee decided that needed to change. There were few opportunities for a Chinese woman already. If she wasn’t admitted to Greenwood’s flying school, her future options were not just limited, they were unthinkable.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗

In August 1932, Greenwood’s first class of 15 students eagerly awaited their departure for China, still heady from newspaper inter­views and farewell speeches delivered at banquets in their honor. Four of the original 19 had failed to complete the class due to physical handicaps such as colorblindness. The proud graduates ready to embark on the adventure of a lifetime posed in front of the Prince in two rows, wearing tentative smiles and looking like boys not used to being photographed. Most wore ties, a few wore crew­neck sweaters over white shirts, and several wore the bomber-style zip-up jackets popular at the time. They had learned more than fly­ing under Greenwood’s guidance; they now believed themselves to be confident young men, no longer boys, ready to fight a war and, if necessary, die for China.

While the men of the CCBA wondered if these kids would have the toughness required to survive combat, Greenwood expressed an unwavering faith in his students. In an interview with Webster A. Jones of the Oregonian, Greenwood tried to deflate the accepted belief that people of Chinese descent could not possibly be as capable as white American pilots. “Chinese make rattling good fliers,” he said. “This myth about Orientals not being able to fly is pure bunk. They are as good as Americans—or other Occiden­tals—in natural ability, and they are superior in a lot of ways.”

Lee (left) and Geneva Slack in 1943. Courtesy of Texas Woman's University Collection

L to R: Faith Buchner, Lee (standing on the wheel) and Grace Clark wearing “zoot suits” in 1943. Courtesy of Texas Woman's University Collection

After the graduates were photographed, Greenwood invited his other flying students to pose for a photo. Lee sauntered over to stand in front of the Prince,wearing wide khaki jodhpurs tucked into black riding boots, a polo shirt and a flight vest. Her goggles had been pushed up onto her flight cap. She took a drag from her cigarette and leaned back on the wing.

Greenwood recognized Lee’s transformation. She moved in a slow, confident stride, with a graceful swagger. Over the summer, she had made rapid progress and would soon fly solo. In a few short months, she had come into her own, and in doing so, had become something completely unique. Greenwood understood her need to be first, to compete with the boys and the girls, too. He smiled and nodded toward her as the camera shutter snapped.

Lee was as talented as any of the male fliers, but the CCBA had not yet granted permission. Since the Chinese elders and businessmen supporting the school paid all the training expenses for the students, they had to be convinced that girls were worth the investment. Greenwood’s latest argument, that the grant to train 36 students had not stipulated they be boys, proved incorrect. The contract called for “young men.” He would have to convince them that Lee was a crack pilot worthy of their financial investment. She had to pass her flying test to receive her license first, but that wasn’t going to be any trouble for her.

Greenwood became a fierce advocate for Lee, telling the Oregonian that she had received the same training as her male counterparts and was just as capable as them, if not more so. He believed Lee would prove his long-held belief that flying involved more finesse than muscle, and that keen intelligence was more important than brute strength.

Besides helping China defend itself against the Japanese invasion and having the opportunity to fly, Lee had another rea­son for wanting to go to China. Her father’s children from a previous marriage—her half-siblings—as well as her aunts, uncles and cousins still lived in the village where her father had grown up. This could be her chance to fulfill her dream of visiting her father’s homeland.

Ferrying trainees being briefed in the Ready Room. Lee appears at the center of the back row. Courtesy of Texas Woman's University Collection

On October 24, 1932, Lee passed the rigorous Department of Commerce pilot examination. Having also accumulated 50 flying hours, half of which were solo, Lee was granted a private pilot’s license. The document described her as a 5-foot-3, 117-pound woman. On November 1, the Oregon Journal reported on Lee’s achievement with the headline “Portland Ele­vator Girl Masters Flying and Gets License.” The reporter wrote, “The fifth floor of the H. Liebes & Co. [department store] was not high enough for Hazel Lee, 20, elevator operator there, so she got up early mornings to learn to fly an airplane. … Miss Lee took an airplane ride a year ago, got interested, and now that she can fly, she plans someday to go to China and interest women there in aviation.”

Lee was, in fact, the first Chinese American woman in the U.S., not just in Oregon, to earn a pilot’s license. (Katherine Sui Fun Cheung, born in China in 1904, earned her pilot’s license a few months before Lee and was the first woman of Chinese descent to do so in the U.S.; she later became a naturalized citizen.) Over the next decade, Lee would fly planes in both China and the U.S., becoming one of just two Chinese Americans accepted into the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II. She died at age 32 on November 25, 1944, two days after her plane collided with another aircraft and burst into flames. “Of the 1,102 women who [flew] in the WASP program, 38 died in service,” notes the Federal Aviation Administration. “Lee was the last.”

Adapted from American Flygirl by Susan Tate Ankeny. Published by Kensington Publishing Corp. Copyright © 2024 by Susan Tate Ankeny. All rights reserved.

[usafphantom2]

The SR-71 Was Close to Perfect

A member of the Blackbirds’ ground crew looks back on the airplane’s flight-test beginnings to the end of the Blackbirds

This first photograph was taken of the SR-71 #972 when it was in a hangar near Dullas airport, waiting for the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to be open. Photo Eric long. The other two photographs were taken at Palmdale California December 21, 1989.

After a 480-mile flight from Beale Air Force Base in California, the midnight-black airplane swooped down to about 300 feet above Burbank Tower, less than 30 seconds after its scheduled arrival time of 12 noon. It made an easy half-roll, then completed two more passes. The parking garage roof where I stood reverberated with cheers, but as the Blackbird came in for its final pass, a hundred feet off the runway, and then pulled up just beyond the tower, the crowd fell silent. was December 1989, and this flyby, a gift to Lockheed employees from Ben Rich, head of Advanced Development Projects (the Skunk Works), marked the beginning of the end of the SR-71. After much debate in Congress, the Blackbirds were about to be retired. The YF-12A, the earlier, single-seat version of the SR-71, first flew in August 1963 and the Blackbird in December 1964. It was still unsurpassed when it was retired in 1990, 24 years after it officially entered service.

As I watched the SR-71 that December day, I thought back to the airplane’s flight-test beginnings in the early 1960s. I thought of Ben Rich, Ray Passon, Keith Beswick, and so many others whose lives were forever touched by this aircraft. I too was part of the Blackbird team, setting up housing, transportation, and communications—special measures due to the secrecy necessary. And above all of us was designer Kelly Johnson, who had a gift for sharing his ability to innovate and his drive to succeed. The unity of commitment we felt under leadership from Larry Bohanan in engineering and Dorsey Kammerer in production reached new intensity whenever Kelly arrived in the field. Sometimes he would good-naturedly arm-wrestle with people working there. His team members were hand-picked and fiercely loyal to him. He once offered $50 to anybody who could find an easy job to do. He got no takers. When it came to their specialties, the people working on the Blackbird were the best in the company, perhaps in the country or even the world. The last word in reconnaissance airplanes, the SR-71 was capable of flying faster than Mach 3 and above 85,000 feet. In fact, the SR-71 flew so fast that even in the cold of those rarefied heights, the friction of the air heated its titanium skin to 550 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the day the Blackbird took to the air for the first time, many of the ground crews showed up. I had worked all night, but sleep in those days seemed like nothing but a waste of time so I stayed to watch. The weather was perfect for a December day: clear and cold, with snow on the surrounding mountains. Somewhere around 8 a.m. the desert silence was shattered by the sound of the twin Buick V-8 engines used for the starters. Later, when the Blackbirds operated at their base at Beale, they had permanent start facilities in their hangars, but in the early days two highly modified 425-cubic-inch Buick Wildcats, an estimated 500 horsepower each, were used to turn a massive starter shaft that was inverted into the first one, then the other of the SR-71’s J-58 engines. One sound I shall never forgot is that of those unmuffled Buicks holding steady at better than 6,000 rpm in excess of 15 seconds at a time, all hours of the day and night. Starting the engines was no easy job.

Kelly Johnson stood by in his familiar dark blue suit and tie, smiling as he had a final word for the pilots.

Veteran crew chief standing next to me could only murmur, “Her enemies will never be natural.”( that was true. It was jealous people that were her enemy.)

Written by Jim Norris

@Habubrats71 via X

[swan-of-sunrise]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Part I)

Summary: Six months after Steve had the super-soldier serum removed and he retired from superhero work to live a quiet life with (Y/N) and their infant daughter, Sam decides to give up the shield and (Y/N) finds herself caught between her best friend and her husband’s less-than-pleased best friend.

Pairing: Steve Rogers X Reader

Word Count: 4.2k

Warnings/Disclaimers: None

A/N: Hi there and welcome to the 5-part series centering around TFATWS! This is one of my favorite MCU shows and when I first watched it, I knew that I wanted to write about what (Y/N) and Steve were up to during that time and I wanted to delve further into Sam and (Y/N)’s friendship. Thank you for reading, and I hope you all enjoy!

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Part I) April 2024 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C. (Previous One-Shot)

“You okay, (Y/L/N)? You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

“Well, you know that feeling you get when you visit your old high school after you’ve graduated and you realize that everything’s changed? That’s sort of how I feel right now, and it’s a shockingly strange and unpleasant feeling.”

Beside (Y/N), Rhodey chuckled but allowed her to wrap her hand around his crooked arm as they strode through the Air and Space Museum’s hangar towards the large platform at its end. “I see what you mean. A lot of change happened for you right here in D.C., and I know that not all those memories are much fun to re-live…truth be told, I’m a little surprised that you accepted the Smithsonian’s invitation at all.”

“I wanted to be here for Sam,” She shrugged and looked up at the banner emblazoned with the image of her husband’s face. “Because God knows that today won’t be easy for him.”

Rhodes nodded and after giving their surroundings a quick assessment, he looked back at her and lowered his voice. “Did you know he was gonna give up the shield?”

Pursing her lips, (Y/N) twisted her wedding ring around her finger and carefully considered her words before replying, “He called us last week and while he didn’t explicitly say what he’d be doing, we both suspected that he was giving up the shield. Steve understood, of course, I’m just not sure that he really understood, if you know what I mean; he’s always been very progressive and forward-thinking for his age and it’s one of the many, many things I love about him, but sometimes he can be a little naïve to how the modern world really operates.” Her eyes flicked over to the covered display case beside the empty podium and her brow furrowed at the sight. “Something about all this doesn’t feel right, Rhodey.”

“Good, you feel it too,” The colonel straightened one of the many ribbons fastened onto the left breast of his dress uniform and snorted. “I’d be surprised if that shield makes it a full week before someone decides to pull it out for a new Captain America. That being said, I can’t exactly fault the guy for making this call; I’m one of the highest-decorated men in the Air Force, but that still doesn’t stop me from experiencing that pain-in-the-ass imposter syndrome from time to time.” By then, the hangar began to fill with more attendees, journalists and photographers, so Rhodes thoughtfully angled them both so that she was partially hidden from their prying eyes. “So, is that husband of yours having lots of fun on the moon?”

(Y/N) laughed. “He liked that conspiracy theory when he first heard it but now that it’s caught on with more mainstream media outlets, he really can’t get enough of it. Once a space nerd, always a space nerd, I suppose.”

“Steve’s doing good, though, right? He’s not having any difficulty adjusting to civilian life?”

“I initially thought he might, but no.” Reaching into her clutch, she withdrew her cell phone and began scrolling through her photos while she talked. “He hasn’t had a single second thought about giving up the serum and retiring from superhero life; he’s gotten back into his art – mostly charcoal and pencil drawings, but he’s been dabbling a little in watercolor painting – and he’s really enjoying all the time he has with Carina now.”

Rhodes smiled as she showed him a photograph of her de-serumed husband, her daughter and their senior German Shepard playing in the backyard of their quaint New England home; seven-month old Carina was seated on Steve’s narrow shoulders and her tiny hands gripped onto his blonde locks while he held her chubby legs, his laughing face scrunched up as Indy licked his cheek. “Well, tell him I’m happy for him. If anyone deserves a quiet life, it’s him.”

A cacophony of shutter clicks drew their attention to the side entrance and they watched as Senator Smith entered the hangar alongside several government officials, military personnel and Sam, carefully holding the vibranium shield in his arms and averting his gaze away from the wall of photographers elbowing one another to capture his image. While Sam ascended the platform’s steps, the older senator moved to join them and shook Rhodes’ hand. “It’s good to see you again, Colonel.” He reached for (Y/N)’s hand and gave it a noticeably-gentler shake along with a sympathetic smile. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for your loss, Mrs. (Y/L/N). If there’s anything I can do for you, please don’t hesitate to call my office and ask.”

(Y/N) forced herself to return his smile and to not wipe her hand on the skirt of her dress as she replied, “Thank you, Senator, but I’m just happy to be here supporting Sam and the Smithsonian’s refurbished exhibit.”

Much to her discomfort, the senator led them both towards the front of the crowd and her jaw clenched as the journalists and photographers started to take notice of her presence; the flashes of their cameras and their hushed speculating brought back memories of the time she spent trapped under a restricting studio contract and the dark days following the tragedy in Lagos, but she fought back the unpleasant feelings by focusing on her best friend as he leaned the shield against the podium’s base and adjusted the microphone before beginning his speech.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here with us today to celebrate the grand re-opening of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s permanent Captain America exhibit. Steve represented the best in all of us. Courageous, righteous, hopeful…and he mastered posing stoically.” (Y/N) rolled her eyes as everyone who’d never once met Steve Rogers chuckled good-humoredly and Rhodes smirked at her reaction. “The world has been forever changed. A few months ago, billions of people reappeared after five years away, sending the world into turmoil. We need new heroes, ones suited for the times we’re in. Symbols are nothing without the women and men that give them meaning, and this thing…” The hangar echoed with shutter clicks as Sam picked up the red, white and blue shield and stared down at it. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a greater symbol. But it’s more about the man who propped it up, and he’s gone.” The photographers began turning their cameras towards (Y/N) and Rhodes to capture their reactions, but they merely continued to diligently stare ahead and refused to look away from Sam. “So today, we honor Steve’s legacy but also, we look to the future. Thank you, Captain America, but this belongs to you.”

Applause filled the hangar as Sam handed the shield over to a Smithsonian worker wearing white cotton gloves, and (Y/N) swallowed the unexpected lump in her throat as the shield her husband carried into countless battles and the shield she believed her best friend was meant to carry was carefully sealed in a display case. She ignored the ominous feeling in the pit of her stomach and wrapped her arms around Sam in a tight hug when he eventually made his way through the throng of journalists and photographers. “Hey there, Birdbrain.”

“Hey, Booksmart.” Sam’s arms held her close and he gave her a half-smile when he pulled away. “I’m glad you decided to come.” He bumped his fist against Rhodes’. “You too, man.”

Before the colonel could reply, Senator Smith joined their group and reached for Sam’s hand. “Thanks again for coming forward with the shield, Sam. It was the right decision.”

(Y/N) watched the senator walk away with narrowed eyes and Rhodes sighed as he nudged a solemn-looking Sam. “Take a walk?”

The three of them were admitted into the refurbished Captain America exhibit and while they walked amongst the artifacts and displays chronicling Steve’s time as the Star-Spangled-Man-With-A-Plan, they talked about their families and what it was like readjusting to normal life after the Battle of Earth and their defeat of Thanos.

“Yeah, I’ve been at home with my sister and my nephews; man, when I left, they were babies and when I come back, they’re little men.” (Y/N) smiled as Sam talked about AJ and Cass; she’d gotten close to Sarah and the Wilson boys during the Snap and paid them several visits throughout the five-year ordeal, knowing that Sam wouldn’t hesitate to do the same for her if their roles were reversed. “It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Well, you should bring ‘em out to D.C. sometime, I’ll teach ‘em how to fly…you know, I mean, the right way.”

Sam scoffed and Rhodes chuckled as (Y/N) led them into the next room, squaring her shoulders as she prepared to broach the topic that they’d all been conscientiously avoiding. “Crazy to think that nobody’s going to be carrying the shield…”

“Hey, we went for seventy years without anybody carrying it when Steve was on ice, so I think we’ll be all right.”

Rhodes gave him a pointed look. “That was a different time, Sam.” They walked past Steve’s old motorcycle and artifacts belonging to the Howling Commandos in heavy silence, and it wasn’t until they entered the next room that the colonel spoke up. “So, you’re gonna make me ask?” They stopped by a display entitled ‘A Final Mission’ and he gestured towards Steve’s photograph. “Why didn’t you take up the mantle?”

Sighing, Sam tucked his hands into his pockets and looked down at his dress shoes. “When Steve first told me about the shield, the first words I said were ‘it feels like it belongs to someone else.’ That someone else is Steve.”

(Y/N) exchanged a knowing look with Rhodes and they followed Sam into a space filled with screens projecting World War II propaganda posters of Captain America intermixed with old photographs from his time in the field. She knew better than to try and argue with Sam about his decision – it was his decision, after all – but there was a spark of hope igniting within her that perhaps Rhodes could talk some sense into him. “The world’s a crazy place right now. People are…well, nobody’s stable. Allies are now enemies, alliances are all torn apart…the world’s broken. Everybody’s just looking for somebody to fix it.” Sam hummed thoughtfully as they walked into the last room, which displayed a mannequin dressed in Steve’s World War II tactical uniform and the glass case containing the shield; just as it had that fateful day she’d run into Steve visiting his own exhibit, seeing his possessions on display for the world to see felt wrong to her and she had to force herself not to reach out and touch the uniform that protected her husband from harm throughout one of the most devastating wars in their country’s history. “It’s a new day, brother.” He patted Sam’s arm and smiled. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Stay safe out there, Rhodey.” (Y/N) gave the colonel a hug and watched him walk through of the exhibit’s exit. “You know, he’s really started growing on me. He’s still annoying as hell, of course, but he’s slowly but surely becoming tolerable.”

Her best friend smiled humorlessly and nodded towards the shield. “So, now it’s your turn to try and guilt-trip me about giving up the shield?”

“If I wanted to do that, then I would’ve done it last week when you called to tell us what you were planning on doing.” With one last look at the shield, (Y/N) turned her back to it and took hold of one of Sam’s hands. “You are your own person, Sam Wilson. No one can tell you what to feel or how to think, and they sure as hell can’t tell you what to do. If there’s anything you need, anything at all, then Steve and I will be there for you no matter what. You read me, Birdbrain?”

Sam’s features relaxed as he squeezed her hand and gave her a firm nod. “Loud and clear, Booksmart.” They continued to hold hands as they walked out of the exhibit and through the lobby of the Air and Space Museum. “You heading back up to Maine today?”

“Yep. I’ve got a few hours to kill before my flight out of La Guardia, so I’m going to stop by our house in Brooklyn to make sure everything’s okay.”

“Well, if you happen to run into that Bionic Man with the staring problem while you’re there, tell him he needs to step into the twenty-first century and learn how to answer calls and texts.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As much as (Y/N) loved the peaceful life they’d been living in Maine, she couldn’t deny that she’d missed the unique atmosphere of Brooklyn. She checked on their house and after locking up, she drove her rental car the short distance from Windsor Terrace to Red Hook and walked through the neighborhood with a smile on her face; she stopped by a small coffee shop and carried her drink tray into the nearby apartment building, keeping her head down as she made her way up to the third floor on the off-chance she’d be recognized and tapping the toe of her Converse sneaker against the furthest door down the hall.

“Who is it?”

(Y/N) smiled to herself as she replied, “The doll who just carried hot chocolate and muffins up three flights of stairs for your geriatric ass.”

The door opened a moment later to reveal Bucky, a curious and almost hesitant expression on his face as his blue eyes scanned the hallway before settling on her. “A little far from home, aren’t you?”

“Well, I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d drop by to visit a good friend.” She lifted the drink tray and paper bag and continued in a comically-enticing voice, “I even brought some hot chocolate and chocolate-chip muffins for him…”

Bucky’s lips curved into a reluctant smile as he stepped aside and let her enter his apartment. “Did Romanoff teach you how to identify people’s weaknesses like that, or is it just a God-given talent?”

“Mostly God-given, but I may have picked up a few pointers from her; she also taught me how to throw knives.” (Y/N) set the food and drinks down on the kitchen counter and hummed along to the record spinning on his turntable. “Duke Ellington. He’s right up there with Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller for me, and he’s definitely the best jazz pianist to come out of the 40’s.”

The super-soldier made an impressed noise. “I’m glad that someone else around here has the same appreciation for good music; although, your appreciation might have a little something to do with the fact that you married a geriatric ass.” He grinned as she laughed at his teasing and started pulling their muffins out of the bag. “So, what brings you back to Brooklyn?”

“I attended the Captain America exhibit re-opening in D.C. this morning and since my flight back to Maine isn’t for a couple more hours, I decided to check on our house in Windsor Terrace and stop by to see how you’re doing.” Bucky took a sip of his hot chocolate and scowled while he peeled the wrapper off the muffin, his displeasure practically rolling off of him; he was more than annoyed when she’d called the week before to tell him what Sam decided to do with the shield, and it seemed as though his attitude hadn’t improved much since. “It’s a shame you decided not to go; I would’ve gotten a real kick out of watching the museum guides try and stop you from breaking into display cases and taking your old stuff back.”

The super-soldier didn’t acknowledge her attempt to lighten the mood as he picked his muffin apart with his vibranium hand. “So, what does Steve think of all this? About Sam just throwing away the shield?”

(Y/N) sat down on the chair beside the kitchen counter and nibbled on her own muffin before answering, “He was a little surprised but he trusts Sam to make his own decisions, the same as I do.” Bucky let out a snort of derision and she pursed her lips to keep her annoyance in check. “Why the sudden care in what Steve thinks, anyhow? You’ve barely spoken to him in the past six months and when you have, it’s never been for any longer than a few minutes. He doesn’t say anything out loud because he’s too proud, but he feels like you’re purposefully pushing him away.”

“I…my therapist said that I need to figure things out on my own right now…”

“Bullshit. I’m in therapy too, Bucky, and I’ve learned that nurturing friendships is an important component to healing from trauma; friendships provide support, and there’s no such thing as too much support.” Her heart clenched as he stubbornly stared down at the kitchen counter; moving as slowly as she could, she lifted one of her hands and gently rested it atop his flesh one, taking it as a good sign that he didn’t flinch away from her touch. “Your life hasn’t been easy and it sure as hell won’t get easier any time soon, but you’re not alone anymore. The fact that you let me into your apartment is insurmountable proof that you’re at least trying, and all I’m asking is that you keep on trying.” After a long moment, Bucky nodded and (Y/N) gave his hand a gentle squeeze before pulling away. “Carina loves that stuffed wolf you sent her.”

A smile slowly tugged at the corner of the super-soldier’s lips as he glanced up at her. “She does?”

“Mm-hmm, she never puts it down.” (Y/N) pulled out her cell phone and scrolled through her photos until she found the photograph she’d been searching for; Carina was fast asleep in her crib and her little fist was wrapped around the fluffy tail of a stuffed white wolf. “You should’ve seen the meltdown she had when we took it away to be washed; I’d never cussed out a washing machine or a dryer for taking too long quite like that before.”

Bucky took another sip of his drink and shrugged. “Well, stubbornness does run on both sides of the family.”

(Y/N) glared in mock-outrage while the super-soldier snickered and devoured the rest of his muffin; she took the opportunity to glance around the rest of his apartment, noting the lack of furniture and the makeshift bed on the floor in front of the television. “So, what do you get up to outside of your court-mandated therapy?”

“I’ve, um…I’ve got a friend. His name’s Yori and we get sushi for lunch on Wednesdays. I also…well, I sorta had a date last night; it didn’t go very well, but considering it’s been about eighty years since the last one…?” He sighed and rubbed a weary hand over his eyes before continuing. “I really am trying, doll, it’s just…the only calm I’ve known in the past century was in Wakanda, and it’s hard not to think that it might’ve been some sort of cosmic fluke. Now that I’m free to do whatever I want with my own life, I don’t even know where to begin.”

Although she could sense that there was something else he was holding back from her, (Y/N) nodded and gave him an encouraging smile. “It seems to me like you’re getting off to a good start. You know, if you’re not comfortable talking to Steve or Yori or anyone else about all this, then maybe you should consider talking to Sam?” Predictably, Bucky grumbled under his breath at the mention of Sam’s name and she rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I really don’t get why you two don’t get along. Sam’s a great friend and while he might not say it out loud, I know that he’s worried about you. At least promise that you’ll think about it?”

“…I suppose, but only ��cause you asked so nicely.” The super-soldier shook his head and arched a brow at her. “Seriously, how the hell does that punk win any arguments with you when he’s got those (Y/E/C) eyes staring back at him?”

(Y/N) shrugged and gave him an innocent smile. “Must be my own special superpower.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m starting to feel like this was all just an elaborate excuse to see me dolled up…”

Across the room, Steve’s azure eyes remained trained on his canvas but crinkled as he attempted to hide his smile. “Hey, I can’t help the ideas that pop into my head whenever you’re around, sunshine. I’m an artist, remember?”

“Mm-hmm, but you might want to work on your professionalism, because I’m pretty sure that artists aren’t supposed to ogle their models while they work,” (Y/N) playfully teased, making sure to keep as still as possible and not change the pose Steve had placed her in nearly three hours before; what she wore wasn’t exactly risqué – a black turtleneck sweater, an auburn high-waisted skirt, opaque black tights and heeled ebony ankle boots – but the outfit paired with her styled hair, expertly-applied makeup and the slightly provocative way she was seated on her office’s desk seemed to be enough to rile her husband up. His attraction to her was rivaled only by his commitment to his art, but it was only a matter of time before one gave way to the other. “If we don’t have anything scheduled for this weekend, I was thinking that we could take a drive down to Essex and hit up the antique shops, maybe grab some lobster rolls for lunch?”

“Sounds good to me…” With a final flourish of his paintbrush, Steve leaned away from the canvas to examine his work and gave it an approving nod. “Okay, I’ve gotten about as much done as I can with this lighting, so I’ll have to work on the details some more tomorrow morning.” He set his brush and palette down before crossing the room and helping her sit straight as her muscles ached in protest. “Thank you again for posing for me, baby. Is there anything I could do to repay the favor?”

(Y/N) pretended to think his offer over before giving him a mischievous grin. “There might be one or two things you could do, but I would be remiss to ask them of such a professional artist as you, sweetheart.”

“Screw professionalism.”

She laughed as Steve’s hands cupped her face and his lips captured hers in a heated kiss that she was quick to return; her arms moved to loop around his neck and as she pulled him closer, one of his hands traveled down to rest on the curve of her waist. He moaned when her lips trailed kisses along his jaw and down his neck but just as his fingers began to fiddle with her skirt’s zipper, a loud wail emanated from the baby monitor on the desk. “Poor baby, that new tooth must really be bothering her…” (Y/N) sighed in sympathy and gave Steve a chaste kiss on the lips before hopping down from the desk. “I’ll go grab the teething ring from the freezer.”

“Okay, I’ll go get her.” Steve snatched up the baby monitor and followed her out of her office, stopping at Carina’s nursery and crooning as he entered, “It’s okay, angel, I’m here now…”

After retrieving the teething ring from the freezer, (Y/N) kissed Carina’s tears away and gave her the plastic device to gum, heading into the living room to put an episode of Kitchen Nightmares on; for some strange reason, Gordon Ramsay and his infamous yelling was the only thing that seemed to help calm the seven-month old down. She switched the television on but just as she prepared to change the channel, she realized that Senator Smith was in the middle of giving a press conference on WHiH and a cold chill went down her spine as she listened to his speech.

“Unrest in the wake of recent events has left us vulnerable. Every day, Americans feel it. While we love heroes who put their lives on the line to defend Earth, we also need a hero to defend this country. We need a real person who embodies America’s greatest values. We need someone to inspire us again, someone who can be a symbol for all of us.”

“That son of a bitch,” (Y/N) breathed, eyes wide in disbelief as she watched the scene unfolding on the television screen before her. “Rhodey was right…”

“(Y/N)? Sunshine, what’s wro-?”

“So, on behalf of the Department of Defense and our Commander-in-Chief, it is with great honor that we announce here today that the United States of America has a new hero. Join me in welcoming your new Captain America!”

Covering her open mouth with her hand, a horrified (Y/N) watched as Senator Smith stepped away from the podium and a Caucasian man dressed in a red, white and blue uniform walked out onto the building’s steps. He waved at the crowd of journalists and photographers eager to document the breaking news, and strapped to his left arm was the vibranium shield that Sam had given up. (Y/N) looked over to see Steve standing in the doorway with Carina and her stuffed white wolf in his arms, a mixture of shock, anger and betrayal in his azure eyes as he watched the new Captain America smile and wave for the cameras.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A/N: I had so much fun working (Y/N) and Steve into this series, and I can’t wait for you guys to read what’s coming next! Updates might be a bit more sporadic than usual but I’m hoping for a chapter every two weeks (still haven’t decided which works best with my schedule and mental health), so make sure to stay tuned for more!

Thank you all so much for reading and commenting! I’ve created a Spotify playlist inspired by this series, and I’ll be updating it every time I upload a new chapter. Enjoy! 

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ziGMhEsAw833GQ9eV44nR?si=6dfead09c76848d5

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Part II)

Stumblin’ In Book VII: “Superhero Snapshots” Masterlist

Stumblin’ In Book I: “The Winter Soldier” Masterlist

Tagging:  @mrs-obrien​​​​​ @lahoete​​​​​ @awkward117 @cminr @natdrunk​​​​ @momc95​​​​​ @savedbystyle​​​​​ @miraculouscloud @awkwardnesshabitat​​​​​ @marinettepotterandplagg​​​​​ @mangosandmimosas @supersouthy @benakenalove​​​​​ @brooke0297​​​​​ @hufflepeople​​​​​ @becausewelie​​​​​ @outoftheregular​​​​​​ @junipermurdock​​​​​ @ladydmalfoy @mads-weasley​​​​​ @username23345 @crist1216​​​​​ @capswife​​​​​ @lilmschild​​​​​ @avngrsinitiative @crowleysqueenofhell​​​​​ @y-napotat​​​​​ @mary1raven​​​​​ @groovy-lady​​​​​ @ljej95​​​​​ @innersublimefury​​​ @prettysbliss​​​​​​  

[h2obased]

Another Word For Surveillance - Part 12

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Summary: You asked Bucky out. He said no. Cool. How do you move on? You don’t.

Notes & Warnings:

DNI if under 18 | Fluff, swearing, canon typical violence, some angst, lotsa pining, sexual content I don’t give permission for my work to be copied/reposted/translated anywhere. I only post stories here and on AO3. Series Chapters || Masterlist Another Word For Surveillance - Part Twelve

BUCKY

Sometimes Bucky had terrible luck. There’s a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian and a handful of documentaries elaborating on this deplorable fact.

When Steve told Bucky about having to leave the same day for a mission, only six minutes after you made him a very happy man in that cramped office room, all Bucky could do was repeatedly curse until Steve ended the call. 

Of course he has to leave again. Of course.

He can’t do anything about that but there was one thing he could change now - he made you his first call. And that made all the difference. 

You took the news well, in that you did not start spouting expletives unlike Bucky, but you were worried nonetheless. 

“Allentown? Wasn’t that a dead end?”

“Can’t say where.” Bucky slipped into another office room at the hangar, which was very similar to where he first kissed you, and the memory filled him with the warmth of assurance. “Sorry Sweets.”

“It’s Allentown.”

“No.” Lie. Bucky didn’t wait for you to catch on. “It’s three days tops.”

“Is it though?”

That made him laugh. A belly-warming, head-clearing, eye-crinkling laugh.

Nobody ever fussed about where Bucky went. Except you. Over a year ago, he was off to steal alien tech in Atlantic City and transport it to a facility in Colorado. He disappeared for two days. Nobody even asked where he had been. But when he skipped a morning meeting to run down a lead, even the groundskeepers told him you popped by to inquire if Bucky had taken one of the mowers again for a joy ride.

It was nice to know you cared enough to be bummed out by the spontaneous nature of his job.

You took a breath, like you wanted to say something.

“Yeah Sweets?” He held his breath.

But you didn’t say much after that. Just a goodbye, with a smile in your voice. “Nothing, just… be careful out there.” A microwave dinged. “In Allentown.”

He pictured you walking around the apartment barefoot, wearing his shirt. The one you never returned. He chuckled, knowing there wasn’t much he could say to make you think you got the location wrong. 

“See you in three days ok?” He sounded a little bit too eager, but this was critical. In three days, he’ll get time with you, away from the office, away from screens, paperwork and case files. Just you and him. 

“Ok Bucky. Three days.” 

You sounded so sweet, even if you didn’t know what he had in mind.

It’s never just three days. Not when Bucky’s on the passenger manifest. Of course. 

His frustration peaked when three days became five and even when the Quinjet hit cruising altitude mere minutes after taking off from an abandoned complex in Allentown on Day Six, he continued to simmer and refused to speak. 

He couldn’t even reply to your messages without rambling. There was much to tell you about the most routine activities - he discovered the best way to roll a hoodie and turn it into a pillow -  but he couldn’t string words together. Instead, he sent you a short text letting you know he’ll be home soon. Bucky tossed his phone into his bag half-heartedly, knowing he would have been better off scrolling through your messages: cat memes and photos of overgrown grass at the compound.

Mild annoyance took up all his energy that moment. He wanted to blame Steve, somebody, anybody, but deep down Bucky knew there was no one to blame for this delay, except maybe the asshole trafficking a bad batch of the super soldier serum that nearly caused a gang turf war to erupt in the east coast.

He closed his eyes and exhaled, feeling his stomach contract and gradually expand as he followed with slow deep breaths. 

Bucky placed his palms flat against his legs and focused on you. He planned on making dinner. One of the three dishes he learned how to do really well. He’d bribe the bozos to stay out of the apartment. So that you can relax and forget about everything else. And if you wanted more than that, well Bucky was prepared for whatever you felt like doing. 

Yeah, he could see himself doing all these things with you. 

Now that he could admit that to himself, a slight panic rose because he really should be spending more time delivering on The Plan. 

To convince you that The Incident back at the bar all those months ago was a fluke. 

That he was prepared to go to great lengths to make you happy. 

That all he wanted to be was yours. 

It wasn’t just a one-night plan - it was a lifetime plan. He was prepared to shoot for the fucking stars.

The potency of his conviction made him feel dizzy at times. It was definitely unusual, this sense of knowing where he belonged. And to whom. For someone who has bounced from one decade to another without a clear sense of why the hell he’s still around, the certainty that he was meant to be here brought him agency. There’s power in that. 

Getting delayed by work wasn’t just inconvenient, it was not acceptable. He wasted enough time sitting on his ass.

Bucky peeked at the screen overhead and grunted. How can it only be two minutes since take off? 

“Breathe man,” Sam intoned from across the aisle.

Bucky exhaled again, expelling nerves from his system, allowing himself to sink into visions of you. The inquisitive smile you wore when he talked about keeping himself entertained during missions. The way your scent cut through and Bucky could never get enough. 

Your hand on his.

The next time he opened his eyes, the jet dipped under the clouds set against the skyline of upstate New York. The pilot announced landing instructions. Bucky was first to disembark and he didn’t stop walking until he reached the secure grid leading to their residence. 

A third of the walk to the apartments was all the time it took to figure out where you were that evening. It had little to do with his tracking skills. 

It was Romanoff who sent him your location. A peace offering of sorts, Bucky supposed.

“Well played,” he muttered as he picked up his pace. He had time to shower - that was it - and then Bucky was making his way to you.

The First Resort was named after Last Resort, the bar in Total Recall. 

Sam said Total Recall was a movie that came out in the nineties. And the 2000s. He was quick to launch into a monologue about a bodybuilder from Austria, but all Bucky cared about was what the name implied about people at the compound resorting to a drink at the end of a long work day.

No judgment there. If Bucky could get drunk, he’d probably be a regular. 

He parked that thought as he arrived at the bar. It didn’t take him long to spot you in the crowd; it’s a skill Bucky was proud to master. 

His eyes zeroed in on you but he was mindful about keeping a neutral expression. He promptly registered your immediate surroundings - assholes abounded, but it's the lethal ones he needed to weed out as a priority - out of habit and smiled politely at the people at your table. It’s the usual crowd from your team with a few engineers, but Bucky wasn’t one to crash a table like he was the guest of honor. 

A guy telling a story about camping in Nevada paused mid-sentence to glance at Bucky standing awkwardly behind your seat.

You turned your head up, your kilowatt smile stunning the soldier. “Hi.”

Bucky couldn’t even remember what he was so angry about on the flight back home anymore.

“Someone’s been drinking to pass the time until your return Barnes,” Claire teased. 

Bucky’s cheeks reddened and he turned to you helplessly. 

You tilted your head toward the bar. “Let’s get you a drink?”

He eyed the half-empty bottle of beer sitting on rings of water by your arm. While everyone else was on their third or fourth beer, you’d been nursing your drink.

“I’ll have another one too please, thanks Bucky!” Claire called out as Bucky followed you to the bar. 

“It’s been a long day for everyone assigned to Stark’s project,” you explained before glancing at the bartender.

“I don’t really want a beer,” he admitted. Bucky knew what he needed to tell you. He just wasn’t sure how to get there. He took a deep breath, feeling the knots in his shoulder relax as your scent filled his head. He swallowed and focused on that. This was a good start.

He caught your  reflection watching him on the metal panel above the shelf of liquor bottles. The two of you stood elbow to elbow on the bar. Close enough to suggest familiarity but not close enough for Claire to whistle and yell inappropriate jokes from her seat. 

It sure as hell wasn’t close enough for him. 

“Bucky Barnes says no to getting a drink with me? Totally unheard of, I am in shock.” Your mouth dropped, a perfect O, and Bucky almost lost his mind. “I’m in shock!”

He bit his lip. It would have to be one of those things he’s going to have to live with. 

“Relax. I’ll get over it.” Your elbow jabbed him. “I think.”

He exhaled with relief, the color returning to his cheeks. 

You ordered a bottle for Claire and a “lemonade on the rocks” for Bucky. 

He stood next to you, back straight, metal arm resting on the wooden surface. The bar was noisy, and he generally refused to subject himself to places like this. As long as you were next to him though, Bucky can forgive the unbearable world. He could switch off everything in the background. You were the only thing that existed.

He caught you eyeing him again, searching for a bruise maybe or a telltale plaster bandage creeping under a hemline.

“I’m fine.” A few cuts on his arm, the one that had functioning pain receptors at that, but Bucky was going to live. “How’s work?” He asked to deflect your attention off his injury.

“What work, someone kicked me out of a case, remember?” Your amused smile taunted him.

“Can’t be kicked out of an op that didn’t exist,” he retorted with a raised brow. 

You shot him a dirty look. Bucky’s heart skipped a beat. The bartender saved him by sliding drinks before the two of you.

The lemonade cooled his hand. Bucky sipped as you recounted your work week. 

“At least I’m not on Stark’s latest pet project thank God.” A shadow fell over his drink when you shifted toward him. Bucky tilted his head to hear you over the music. “I’m not supposed to know it involves selling fake Stark tech on the dark web.”

Bucky glanced back at the table. Claire waved at him, presumably asking for her beer. 

You followed his gaze and sighed. “Has she been waving for beer this entire time?”

It’s very bad for a field agent like him to be this unaware about everything that was not you. 

Bucky smiled. He’d give his good arm to get rid of the hypervigilance drilled into his brain. 

“Is it going to be one of those times where you do all the smiling and listening?”

He shook his head and found his opening. Bucky turned to you. “I’m making ribs tonight.” That didn’t sound like an invitation. “At home.” Bucky groaned inwardly. What’s up with the declarations? Ask the question, dumbass.

“Sounds nice.”

“You hungry?” He finally blurted out. “I mean-“

“Yeah.”

He grinned, partly relieved, but mainly just happy to be right where you were now. “I walked here.”

You didn’t need to consider it. “Guess I’m going to be famished by the time we reach the south grid.”

On the way out, you passed Claire’s beer to him. Bucky promptly delivered it to her seat. 

Claire accepted the bottle with a wink.

“We’re going for a walk,” he explained, like he needed Claire’s permission.

“Yeah sure.” Claire waved him off with a lazy hand and another sly wink.

It took ages to return to the apartment. He couldn’t very well hoist you over his shoulder and start sprinting. Bucky eyed you carefully, amused that half of his brain already considered the mechanics it would entail. 

The noises dulled the farther you walked. A soft wind blew south. Grass muffled carefree footsteps. 

Bucky smiled. It would be so easy; he wouldn’t even break a sweat.

You questioned his chuckles with narrowed eyes. 

“Hmmm?” His round eyes countered yours. 

Not that he minded the slow hike. It gave you time to ask him in three different ways if he was indeed fine and not hiding any other injuries. You only moved on to Kit The Tractor when his reply satisfied you. 

There wasn’t much he could say by way of lawnmower updates because he’d been away and while he did his best thinking while repairing machines, Bucky had been spending his free time hunting down special flavored KitKats or hanging around in the office to see you instead. 

The apartments loomed ahead, finally, and he noticed your sudden hesitation, footsteps slowing, like you haven’t been to the area before.

“So I got this interesting email from the security office this week…” Your eyes focused on the path ahead. “It said - come down to Happy Hogan’s office ASAP. I was not allowed to reschedule the appointment. When I get there, Happy wants to know if I consent to my biometric information being kept on file.”

“Ah,” was all Bucky could offer. It appeared he wasn’t the only one with ulterior motives for this walk. 

You looked at him curiously. “And because I’m not an idiot I asked for what purpose my personal data was being stored and processed. Guess what he said.”

“Uh-“ Bucky stalled. 

“Unrestricted access to Grid 5 common areas and the private quarters of Mr. James Barnes.” 

By then, you reached the steps to the lobby, where the doors promptly slid open. You entered the building and waited for Bucky to follow before turning toward him with crossed arms. 

“So all those times we were barely speaking, I could have - we could have been…“ You gestured to both of you before slowly dropping your hands to your sides. Your eyes stayed on him but Bucky knew you were speeding through different scenarios in your mind, calculating the likelihood of getting hurt again.

Bucky swallowed. He knew things weren’t going to be perfect everyday. But together, the two of you can string the happy days one after the next, until a terrible day comes but the thing is - he’ll love you through all those days too. And maybe, you’d put your faith in that promise and trust Bucky too.

“Were you ever going to tell me about it?” 

Bucky opened his mouth to defend his lack of judgment but your expression stopped him. One look at your understanding eyes, arched brows waiting patiently for him, and flushed cheeks, not from walking but from knowing exactly what it means for Bucky to fill out five darned forms so you could come and go to the apartments as you pleased - he could only smile back sheepishly. 

He scratched his head and offered you an apologetic grin. This wasn’t how he wanted you to find out about having access to his house all this time.

He also remembered that the lobby was dotted with security cameras broadcasting a live feed to other residents.

Bucky gestured to the elevators quickly and wordlessly, relieved you didn’t demand an explanation right then, when half the team could be watching from their own monitors. 

You entered the lift and Bucky slipped in just before the doors closed. Before small talk could be attempted, the doors reopened on the floor he shared with his best friends.

You stepped out and Bucky walked behind you the entire time, listening to your theories on how the security system worked. 

“Where’s everyone?” 

Steve was in Malta, sticking his nose into something best left alone. Sam, proving he understood Bucky more than either of them wanted to admit, said he was flying to New Orleans right before the jet landed earlier.

“Gone,” Bucky replied. He cared about his friends - one could even say he loved those clowns - but right now, he did not give a rat’s ass. With all due respect.

“Ah.” You leaned against the kitchen island, hip caressing tile, and Bucky swore you did these things on purpose. 

He followed your idle gaze skimming the shiny Italian coffee machine on the counter (Sam’s) and the bananas (Bucky’s) two days away from being officially inedible. 

The simmering pot caught your eye. “You left the stove on?”

He almost forgot about that. Bucky glanced at his watch. Half an hour or so left on the ribs. He nodded once.

“What if I wasn’t at the bar?”

He shrugged again because it didn’t matter. “You’d be in the office. Or home.” It could have been a dive bar in Chinatown. He would find you. 

The happy smile sucker punched him again. Bucky held on to the counter - to his wits - with a Vibranium grip.

With a deep breath, he turned to you. “I was gonna tell you about the security list.” A line of sweat formed above his brows.

There were so many things he wanted to tell you. Ever since that night at the bar. 

When he begins to feel overwhelmed, he finds it best to focus on you. The center of his world. Bucky followed the magnetic pull with stumbling feet and he’s relieved when you giggled at the contact.

“You have a very unusual way of telling people you like them.” Your fingers brushed his chest, right over his ancient heart, the one he believed was beyond fixing.

He was so wrong, thank God.

Bucky had to clear his throat. “I don’t like people.” You, on the other hand… “But you can come here whenever you want. I have cookies. And books. I have good books you’d like. And uh… I have a photo of my family somewhere… and guns- ” from the 1940s, he meant to add but he was scrambling for points of interest in the apartment that were more Sweets-aligned and less old man vibes.

“Come run surveillance here. On me.” His voice felt hoarse. He took a deep breath. “Although technically running surveillance means-.”

“I know.” Your lips quickly brushed his, effectively halting his panic. “I like you too, Bucky Barnes. A lot.”

After you pulled back with a triumphant smile, he was momentarily confused but mostly giddy. Too giddy even to be disappointed by the fleeting kiss. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t fix anyway. “How about you ask your building super to give me a break then?” He lifted your chin with a trembling hand, gazing at your mouth with undisguised hunger. 

Fucking hell he’d turn the world upside down if you asked him to.

Bucky kissed you and took his sweet time about it. He tasted the smile on your lips; they were heavenly, just as he remembered. He would never get enough of it. 

He savored your warmth and the way your curves and edges seemed to be a perfect fit with his. Eager hands squeezed the exposed skin above your waist, and when you gasped, he swooped in to take your breath with another kiss.

His searching tongue coaxed yours into tasting his. With every passing second, Bucky lost himself. He couldn’t hang on to a single thought so he followed his instincts instead. 

A surge of hunger overtook him, testing his self-control. He held your face as gently as his needy hands could, and kissed you like a man making up for lost time. 

His hands kneaded your back, moving slowly until they settled on your waist again.

You sighed, your breath fanning Bucky’s feverish neck. He whispered your name as you trailed kisses from his jaw to his neck, his hands never leaving your lower back. He couldn’t let you go. Not again. 

“Do you-“

“Yeah-“

Bucky nearly kicked his bedroom door off its hinges. He cupped your cheek and backed you onto his bed. 

While crossing the threshold to his room didn’t dull the intensity in him, it heightened the intimacy to the point where Bucky’s heart stilled. He took your hand and kissed your wrist, almost reverently. He was so lost in you and yet he could see everything so clearly too. 

The strands of messy hair, his own doing. The soft line framing your mouth when you smiled at him. The light in your eyes. 

The slowed pace confused you for a moment, but before you could say a word, Bucky pressed his nose into your flushed neck. His hands itched to rip your clothes off, but he slipped a finger under your hoodie instead, sliding it off one shoulder slowly before moving to the other.

He wanted to remember all of this. 

“I miss you.” He confessed as you left a delicious path of kisses over his jaw. “Miss you everyday. When you’re not in the office. When they make me go - ah oh fuck,” Bucky gasped when your hand trailed below his navel.

With careful hands he pulled your shirt up. Soft, warm skin beckoned. Bucky practically tore the fabric apart trying to get it off you. 

“Let me - Buck - whoa, Bucky!” You giggled at his impatience. 

His eyes went wide with awe. You were the most beautiful thing he’s laid eyes on. And you were on his bed. 

He climbed over you within seconds, determined to kiss every surface area that was just unveiled to him. 

“Bucky.“ Your outstretched hand only found air. 

He made quick work of your boots and jeans. His breathing picked up with every inch of leg revealed. He was already delirious and it’s only from watching you writhe on his sheet, undeniable want etched on your face.

“Bucky.” A little more stern this time, but he really liked how his name sounded coming from you.

“Yeah Sweets?” He discarded his own clothes with ease. He watched you rake his body up and down in admiration with your eyes and dropped jaw.

“I didn’t come here to stare at you… come here…” Your voice trailed as your gaze finally settled on his eyes.

He smirked. Bucky was obedient when the right orders were given. Within a second he straddled your hips, the tip of his nose brushing yours. Your lips parted but he didn’t give you a chance to breathe. Bucky kissed you with determined lips, his fingers brushing the hair off your face. 

All he knew for decades was loneliness. The program wiped his memories, but the hollow ache remained, not even after the crew picked him up from Wakanda. 

Yet right now, he couldn’t even tell where he ended and you began. 

And neither of you seemed to be in such a hurry to figure that one out. 

He chuckled against your chest. 

“What’s so funny?” Your idle hand caressed his tingling skin.

Bucky felt your body arching to him. He quietly marveled at how good this feels - and how the intimacy feels familiar, similar to exchanging secret looks from across a conference room, like things were always meant to be like this. He crawled up to you, whispering “Nothing.”

Just that sometimes he was also one lucky bastard.

Thank you for reading. I hope you liked this.

If you need more Bucky in your life, I have other stories here: Masterlist.

[mennaelsallab]

Extra Research

The Great Picture is a massive photograph that was taken with one of the largest cameras in the world. The photograph measures 31 feet high by 107 feet wide, and it depicts a panoramic view of the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, California. The photograph was taken by a group of photographers known as The Legacy Project, who used a converted F-18 hangar as their darkroom. The Great Picture was created in 2006 and was displayed for the first time in a temporary exhibition space in Irvine, California. The exhibition was a huge success, drawing in thousands of visitors and earning praise from critics and art enthusiasts alike. The photograph was later displayed in other locations, including the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and the California Museum of Photography in Riverside, California. The Great Picture is a unique work of art that combines elements of photography, sculpture, and installation art. The photograph's sheer size and scale make it a stunning sight to behold, and its panoramic view of the air station provides a fascinating glimpse into military life and technology. The photograph is also notable for its technical achievements, as the photographers used a custom-built camera and specialized film to capture the image. The Great Picture has been praised for its ability to capture the grandeur and scale of the air station, as well as its attention to detail and composition. The photograph is a testament to the power of photography as a medium for capturing and conveying complex ideas and experiences, and it remains a popular attraction for art and photography enthusiasts. The Legacy Project, the group of photographers responsible for The Great Picture, is a collective of artists and photographers who are dedicated to preserving and promoting the legacy of traditional photography. In addition to creating large-format photographs like The Great Picture, the group also offers workshops and educational programs to teach people about the art and science of photography. Overall, The Great Picture exhibition is an impressive feat of artistic and technical achievement. The photograph's massive scale and panoramic view provide a striking and immersive experience for viewers, and its attention to detail and composition make it a true work of art. The exhibition is a testament to the power of photography as a medium for capturing and conveying complex ideas and experiences, and it serves as an inspiration for artists and photographers around the world.

[stusalgus]

Washington

We arrived in Washington at 7ish PM local time, and we expected to get to our Airport hotel quickly, have a bite to eat, and have an early night. Instead we were stuck in passport control for an hour and a half. Now to be fair I've experienced this misery in other airports (Heathrow and LAX are examples that spring to mind), and fairly or unfairly it always leaves me resenting the country that can't put enough staff on to handle busy times. It was 2am Reykyavik time and we were pretty exhausted, esp poor old Angus. Luckily we had wifi, or we would have started rioting.

Eventually we made it through, and shambled our way out of the airport and then for one stop on the metro. We came out at a creepy business park and checked in to our creepy Hyatt Park and slept in an enormous if slightly tired room.

We then retired for the night.

14 April

Back in America, we had a buffet breakfast where we ate a large quantity of not-quite food (a stark contrast to our fare in Iceland, I can tell you), before jumping on a bus to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy branch of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Situated out the back of Dulles Airport. this hangar boasts several treasures: an Air France concorde, an SR-71 Blackbird reconaissance plane, and the space shuttle Discovery. Also there is the Enola Gay: subject of the OMD song and also the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

We arrived 20 minutes before opening, and about ten minutes to go the coaches started arriving and disgorging punters. By the time of opening there was a big queue. Luckily we got to be at the front. We were told to expect airport-style security but after passing through a metal detector we were told to keep walking, and so we did, all the way to the concorde. It was maybe another ten minutes before other visitors reached us; so, very briefly, we had the place to ourselves.

The highlight for me was the Discovery. It was lit reverently, like a kind of secular sacred object. Everything about looked super iconic.

After the museum we caught the bus back to our hotel, picked up our bags and caught the metro into DC proper. We checked in to an apartment - essentially a large hotel room with kitchen - a motel room, essentially, except we didn't have a car.

We went on a stroll to a Walgreens supermarket to buy some food for dinner. We went a few blocks south of our hotel into a residential area lined with trees populated by squirrels. The late afternoon sun streamed down and it was a balmy 25 degrees. There were large apartment blocks that seemed well kept. If the architecture felt a bit Thorndon the vibe on the footpath was more Newtown, with a constant trooping of people who didn't seem to be very well off, or at all well. I was a bit confused by this, but I've had similar experiences in London so I'm guessing it's a case of different socio-economic segments living cheek by jowel.

The Walgreens was absolutely fascinating. Everything said about the dreadful state of US food is true. NZ supermarkets (and Iceland, I should add) provide a much better quality of fare. As for our dinner, the best we could find were frozen dumplings and noodles, which we took back to our hotel and cooked.

We then retired for the night.

15 April

Today we went to the National Zoo. The zoo opened at 8:30, so we caught the metro there early to beat the crowds and forecast heat. Unfortunately, this meant some of the animals hadn't bothered to get out of bed yet. What animals did we manage to see? Well:

An Asian Sloth Bear, relaxing in a hammock, arms behind its head

3x Indian elephants

2x 2-toed sloths

A couple of bison

A komodo dragon

A couple of orangutans, brachiating wildly

A lowlands gorilla mother and child (grumpy-looking silverback was around the corner taking a break)

A number of colourful frogs

A number of colourful stingrays

A sea lion or two

A family of spectacled bears (possibly from darkest Peru)

The animals that made the biggest impression on Sally and me were the elephants and the orangutans. Elephants strike me as both very ugly and graceful and charming animals. Orangutans feel like the sort of ape you could get along with, whereas (in my limited experience of animals in captivity only) gorillas seem standoffish and chimpanzees seem positiviely sinister.

The forecast was for 84 degrees, which is 28.9 celsius, and it got as high as 86 (30c) before there was a downpour and temperature was sacrificed for humidity. All this heat is a bit unseasonable, but it had been similar the previous day and I'd found it quite comfortable. Turns out the humidity in Washington (at least in April) is about half that of Wellington. So it was hot but not too uncomfortable, although I regretted wearing jeans. If this seems a bit excessive for mid spring, it is; it shouldn't be this hot until June.

We caught the metro back into town and ate at a Korean restaurant while the heavens opened. We then sauntered and sweltered to the National Archive, home to the three founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. The Archive building is a stunning piece of classical architecture. In fact the whole of Washington seems to be an architectural attempt to resurrect the Roman Republic. The room containing the three sacred documents was awash with punters trying to simultaneously see the documents and and read material explaining them. The docs themselves are practically illegible - the ink on them has faded and the room is kept dark to preserve them. I tried to explain what that the constitution made everyone equal and then satirically whispered "except the slaves", and then became uncomfortably aware of the armed black guard standing right next to me, and wondered if what I'd said had caused any affront. Oh, probably.

After an aeon spent waiting for Sally and Angus to peruse the giftshop, we made our way back to our hotel to cool down in the pool.

We then retired for the night.

16 April

We blitzed an early trail up to the Capitol, for a tour. The building is still infamous for its storming by furious Trump supporters on January 6 2021. Everything was running more smoothly today, however. The sky was clear and the neoclassical marble shone brilliantly. We went quickly through airport-style security (one of these days when I pull my belt off, my pants are gonna fall down) and on into a group ushered about the small number of rooms we were able to visit (ie not the senate or house chambers) by a handle-bar moustachioed fellow named Danny. He had a winning combination of informativeness, irreverance, and a penchant for what my son considers to be "dad jokes", but which I found to be funny and insightful.

The chief treasure of the Capitol is its rotunda, which has a ceiling fresco featuring George Washington being ushered into heaven. It's a scene that's slightly comical. At ground level the rotunda contains statues of former presidents, including that jolly old salesman Ronald Reagan, and… Gerald Ford (why??).

I guess it was a conscious decision, but not only does the Capitol evoke Roman architecure, but it is set up to be a kind of temple. Danny mentioned that the original idea was to bury Washington under the rotunda, with the ceiling fresco implying he was becoming a god. Luckily Washington nixed that idea and was buried on his estate. It's a weird contradiction - the union being set up with a separation of church and state, yet the Capitol's architecture suggests a desire to create a sort of state religion.

I should add that on top of the capitol dome stands a statue of the personification of freedom. There's a copy of the statue in the visitors' centre, which looks pretty goofy: Lady Freedom has a stricken eagle on her head, and there's a circle of stars around her head, like she's suffered a concussion. Her wide-eyed expression doesn't help any.

After the tour it was down a tunnel and into the Library of Congress. More classical columns and whatnot. Apparently the library was Thomas Jefferson's idea to cement learning into the new nation, and the building is a temple to knowledge. Showing a confidence in Western Civilisation sadly lacking today, a ceiling panel in the building has America as the end stage of a march of personifications of different civilisations, starting with Ancient Egypt, through the Greeks and Romans, and eventually leading to America.

Enough of the propoganda! The two most stirring objects we saw were a Gutenberg bible and a very incomplete map of the world from the early 16th century.

Our next port of call was the Whitehouse visitors centre. As non-US citizens we couldn't get within coee of the Whitehouse proper, so we had to make do with a small museum across the road. The chief excitement was Gus being inducted as junior National Park Service ranger by filling out a questionaire and having to recite an oath.

At 3pm we found ourselves at the Washington monument. Apparently the fresco depicting Washington's apotheosis wasn't deemed a sufficient expression of gratitude to the General, and the world's tallest obelisk needed to be erected in addition. We caught a lift up 500 feet and peeped out of windows on each of the four sizes. I haven't mentioned until now, but Washington D.C. is laid out on a very large scale (makes for a lot of trudging), so being up 150m was a good way to take it in. Before going up in the elevator I learned the unsettling fact that the memorial is the world's largest freestanding stone building, with no steel reinforcing. I thought "luckily there's no earthquakes here", only to learn at the top that the monument had indeed been damaged by an earthquake in 2011.

After a bit of debate we decided to finish the day with a tour of the nearby Museum of American history. After professing little interest in the museum, Angus was (lamentably) enthused to discover lots of exhibits of weapons used in various wars. I found the museum a bit piecemeal; it didn't really tell a single coherent story. Perhaps we would have found something more resonant at the Museum of African American History, only we didn't want to be made depressed.

We then retired for the night.

17 April

Nasa's Washington headquarters are across the road from us, and it has a small visitor centre, so first thing we went and had a look. The focus was on earth science observations, one of the least exciting (but most urgent) tasks Nasa performs. There were some nice data visualisations, and a system that projectied our shapes on the wall in psychedelic fashion.

After about 20 minutes of all that we walked up the road to the Natural History Museum. This is perhaps the heart of the Smithsonian Institution and Angus and I were looking forward to it. We enjoyed the various classic skellingtons: mastodon, woolly mammoth, giant ground sloth, T-Rex, diplodicus, stegosaurus, allorsaurus… the usual. There was similar, welcome emphasis on pre-Dinosaur times ('cos of climate change the end-Permian extinction seems to be prominent in these museums). So how did it compare with the Field museum. Well, I enjoyed the Field museum more, but I suspect that's more to do with the hordes of demented school children boiling through the museum than any qualitative difference between the two. I will say though, I'm growing tired of tying evey climatic event in Earth's geophysical history to current climate change. It's a subjective gripe, but: I GET IT; I don't need to hear it again (and again). But I guess a museum needs to view each visit as the punter's first (and perhaps only) time being exposed to these ideas.

We went upstairs to the gem collection and had a gander at the Hope Diamond. I have to say I was expecting something bigger. Elsewhere we looked at shiny rocks and dodged numerous urchins. An autistic kid started screaming; we hurriedly made for the exit. One more detail: there was a life-size megalodon dangling in the cafeteria.

We had lunch at the pavilion cafe in the National Gallery of Art sculpture garden (highlight: a bit of optical illusory fun by Ray Lichtenstein). We had a bit of time before our next event so we went to the Hirshorn Museum. The titular Hirshorn was fabulously wealthy and had an excellent collection of 20th Century masters. There was also an installation by Laurie Anderson. Outside the museum there was a sculpture garden featuring a bunch of Rodin, Henry Moore, and a Barbara Hepworth.

After the Hirshorn we marched north to Planet Word, a museum about words and the features of language, conveyed through three floors of interactive exhibits. Against Washington's august and worthy museums this might seem a slight proposition, but the exhibits are well conceived, esp a "song gallery" in which patrons could sing various songs and also learn the language features that make for good song lyrics. We heard some kids deliver an effective rendition of Shake it Off (Taylor Swift, doncherknow), followed by an appalling attempt at Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire by some adults who should be ashamed!

Another highlight was Gus getting to read autocue and deliver an inspiring piece of Obama rhetoric, while Sally and I gave a stirring performance of Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you" speech.

Planet Word closed and we shifted next door to Planet Word was a restaurant called Immigrant Food. It was Happy Hour, and we happily ordered a series as dinner. The most remarkable item were Venezualan Tequenos, a small piece of cheese that wrapped in dough and deep fried. Bueno!

We then retired for the night.

18 April

We were a bit more leisurely in the morning, as we had to check out of our hotel. Sally booked two hotels for our Washington stay, the second just a block along from the first. The "Residence Inn by Marriot" that we've been staying in has been pretty good, but we've paid a premium for that, so to split the difference we moved to the Hyatt Place. We stayed at the same chain near Dulles Airport. It wasn't great. The new version is nicer, but I'm dreading breakfast tomorrow.

Across the road Nasa was celebrating Earth Day early, and had a number of scientists and activities as a kind of outreach. Once again we crossed the road, and spent the better part of an hour doing activities and learning, before making off with a good amount of free swag. Chatting to the scientists was interesting, and at times sobering, climate-wise.

A short stroll up the road brought us to the National Air and Space Museum. Having seen a lot of stuff at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy wing of the same museum, I wasn't expecting too much, but I found that while there was less room for planes, the supporting exhibits had a lot more information. And it should be said the museum does have some of the most sacred items of American aerospace: a Wright Flyer, the Apollo 11 and Freedom 7 space capsules, and the Spirit of St Louis (which I have to confess I didn't manage to spot). The biggest shock and awe though was the gallery about solar system exploration, in which information was densely packed into numerous screens among many model probes.

More astonishing still was that in the giftshop Angus ran into his school- (and rockband-) mate Crawford, and family. What are the chances?! We had a slightly stunned conversation with his parents and traded tips about New York and Chicago.

After this shock we left the museum and returned to our lodgings for a rest. At 5 we went back out to go memorial hunting on the eastern end of the National Mall. We caught the metro to Foggy Bottom (hur hur!) and progressed past the notorious Watergate Complex, dodged the Kennedy Center, then intersected with the Einstein memorial. The physicist's statue captures him well, I think, but also manages to make him into a Disney character - he reminded me of the Disney Winnie the Pooh (if that makes any sense??).

After that we saw the Vietnam war memorial, before turning Sharply right to visit the Lincoln memorial. The elegant building is being renovated looking a bit awful, but the Great Man was safe inside. I like that they portray him seated, looking a bit knackered. Makes him sort of otherworldly. If the Capitol and Washington's monument were intent on sending George to the heavens, Lincoln's memorial makes his assassination feel akin to the crufifixion. Well, maybe. There are two of Lincoln's speeches on each side wall. One is the speech he made at his seond inauguration, which is a bit wordy, despite starting out saying he didn't have much to say. The Gettysburg Address on the other wall is much more to the point.

After Lincoln we visited the Korean War memorial, and then Martin Luther King's. I feel like perhaps King could have done with his own temple, like Lincoln got, but not yet, anyway.

We decided to leave the Roosevelt and Jefferson memorials for another day. We had booked in for the Library of Congress's late night Thursdays, and we had about 20 minutes to get to the other end of the mall in time to see a performance by the avant garde Kronos Quartet. After having no luck with Lyft we decided to Uber it. I don't think we've Ubered in NZ, and it was definitely a first for us in the US, but it seemed to work well.

We rushed into the Library, had bite to eat in about three minutes and dashed downstairs for the performance, only to find that we hadn't booked the Kronos at all (the tickets were a bit ambuguous). Instead we were permitted to sit in a side roon while remaining seats were granted based on a lottery, for which all the tickets had already been given out. We did wait long enough to hear the first song: a rollicking string quartet rendition of House of the Rising Son, before Sally suggested we leave and get an early night in.

We walked back to our hotel on a warm spring evening. The streets were empty and the surrounds, though a bit bureaucratic, were also peaceful. Very nice.

We then retired for the night.

19 April

We rocked out and visited the Spy Museum. It seemed a touch frivolous compared to the august institutions we'd been visiting, but it was genuinely informative. There was also a collection of James Bond vehicles which I watched with misty-eyed nostalgia.

On the way to the food court we bumped into Crawford and family, who were on their way to the spy museum. I think they're off to Chicago and we're off to New York, so not sure if we'll rendezvous a third time.

After lunch we went to the National Gallery, which houses a vast collection of artworks. I reckoned we'd get more value out of the east wing, which hosts modern art, so we went there first. The building was designed by I.M. Pei, and a bit like Frank Gehry's building for the Bilbao Guggenheim, the architecture rather overshadows the artwork. It doesn't help that the building is structured around a large atrium, with galleries situated in the corners, so when you explore it you're always wondering "where's the art?".

The west wing is nothing but art, and the galleries are so labyrinthine that I frequently lost track of where I was. Sally and Angus left early to climb the Postal Service pavilion, while I tried to cover as much ground as I could. I followed my usual plan: pay close attention to the Renaissance, and the Dutch Republic, stride quickly through the baroque and the French academic painting, then pay close attention to Turner and other Romantics (though ignoring all the sentimental Victorian crap), before romping home with the Impressionists.

I largely followed this plan, though I did also pay some attention to American art, esp the early Presidential portraiture (and the odd Whistler) - but if I'm honest I have a feeling I only saw 2/3 to 3/4 of the gallery. I could have done it more justice if it had been first thing in the morning, but by mid afternoon I was getting museum fatigue. I made my way back to the hotel, where I was joined by Sally and Gus, who reported the lift in the pavilion broke down and they had to walk down nine flights. The only thing worse would have been to walk up!

For dinner we made our way to The Wharf, a fancy waterside development containing strange-shaped, glass-faced apartment buildings with restaurants on the ground floors. We dined at Mason's Lobster Rolls, which I'd glass as a fancier (and tastier) McDonald's. Down the road there was a Gordon Ramsay's fish and chips, which didn't seem too promising, but said chippie was heaving with punters. Rule Brittania!

The Wharf seemed to be quite a successful piece of urban renewal; unlike in New Zealand enough money had been thrown at it not to make it feel cheap and half-arsed. We caught a free (free!) shuttle back to L'Enfant metro station, and walked back to our hotel.

We then retired for the night.

20 April

This morning we made our way to Union Station to catch a train to Baltimore. Fans of the Wire would find this an odd choice of tourist destination, but we were going there to meet Sally's cousin Albert, who would conduct us on a visit to the National Aquarium. The train ride took about an hour and we met Albert outside the station.

Although there were plenty of sharks and rays and turtles on offer at the aquarium, two of the biggest highlights were puffins (another Sally favourite) and another two-toed tree sloth in an area devoted to rainforest wetland. There were also dolphins. Albert explained to me that in line with other aquaria there were no longer dolphin shows, which I took to mean there were no dolphins. Happily, the dolphin tank did indeed contain dolphins, and we happened to be there just in time for feeding. When being fed the animals performed tricks, along with spontaneous leaps and other wheezes, so it was hard to say that we weren't watching a show. We were certainly entertained. I guess you can't force intelligent animals not to do tricks.

After this we went to a seafood restaurant that specialises in crab cakes, which we ordered. Said cakes were the size of a baseball and rather rich (felt a bit sorry for all the crabs who died to make them, to be honest; tasted great though!). We had a good chat with Albert. He's a molecular biologist doing work on mutated proteins created/used by cancer cells. The plan is to develop therapies from them. He also told us he had an experiment to crystallise proteins taken up into space in the hope that the desired crystallisation would occur more readily in zero gravity. I was extremely impressed and urged Angus to take note that we were in the presence of a Scientist.

After lunch we parted with Albert and caught the train back to D.C. There was enough sun left to tick off the monuments of Franklin Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Roosevelt's was a sprawling affair, more landscape gardening than memorial, featuring waterfalls, trees, rocks. There was a statue of FDR at one end though, and wife Eleanor got one too.

Thomas Jefferson's marble columned temple was a more straightforward affair, set up more like Lincoln's. We also got a look in at the cherry trees (sadly out of blossom season), and also saw the water overflowing the path by the Tidal Basin in several places. Apparently the water is rising due to climate change and new flood protection will have to be built.

With the sun setting we wandered back to our hotel.

We then retired for the night.

21 April

We started a chilly morning by travelling out to Arlington National Cemetary. Interestingly, despite being only over the potomac river (ie just beyond the Lincoln Memorial), it's outside the D.C. boundary, making it across the state line (sounds much more dramatic) in Virginia.

The cemetary contains thousands upon thousands of war dead from numerous conflicts. (It certainly puts the military plot in Karori cemetary to shame.) We took perhaps the most minimal path possible, taking in the JFK (and Jackie) memorial, with its eternal flame; the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle memorials; and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This last has a guard of honour that happened to be changing when we wandered by. This ritual required a lot of meticulous stepping and crisp heel clacking, and much rifle shouldering. As I said to Sally, if it was a Japanese I would be nodding and stroking my chin with interest; as it's an American custom I thought it was a bit silly.

Still feeling cold we went back down the hill. Quite by chance I happened to spot to headstone of the late supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (it helps to have a Star of David on your headstone rather than the much more common crucifix).

We caught the metro back across down to Eastern Market. (I should say something about the DC metro. It's one of the best mass transit systems I've been on. Clean, frequent, fairly inexpensive, with nice gleaming carriages and brutalist concrete stations, its nigh-on perfect.)

Eastern Market is at the backend of Capitol Hill and is unspeakbly twee, and I say that as someone who has been to the Havelock North Sunday market. As an example, NZ markets normally have stalls vending hippie/bogan tie-dyed shirts, crystals, scented candles, and maybe posters of Bob Marley smoking weed. There was none of that here, only tasteful African ornaments, bespoke hummus, and other bourgeois fancies.

We went into a 150 year old food hall and bought some gimbap (Korean sushi), an okomonoyake (cabbage and noodle omelette) from an Asian vendor; and a cinnamon twist, chocolate croissant and walnut brownie from a baker. Everything was delicious. Everything!

Significantly fortified by this food we zipped back across town to Renwick museum. This contained contemporary American art which was predominantly by women, and had some sort of indigenous ethnic or political slant. I've become so jaundiced towards social-justice motivated art that I couldn't get into any of it; even the coloured fishing net plus lightshow installation about nothing more controversial than the Tohoku earthquake of 2011 made me sneer.

Sally enjoyed the museum. Angus was "hungry" (read: bored).

The Renwick was very adjacent to the White House, which we hadn't really gotten a good look at. We went out the back of it an took a picture. There were various protests going on. A group of climate protestors was rallying in support of some court case the Department of Justice weren't interested in. There was an old bloke supporting Palestine and another supporting Israel. (Further on there was a larger rally with lots of US and Israeli flags, presumably also in support of Israel. I don't know if Joe was aware of any of this, but everyone carried on like he could be. Secret Service agents stolled around the crowd, in uniforms paradoxically identifying them as secret.

Here's another thing I haven't mentioned: D.C. is awash with cops. Wandering through the city you're practically tripping over someone in uniform with a gun. Paranoid? Well, when you've had the Capitol stormed and a plane dropped on the Pentagon I guess you'd be a little paranoid too. I have to confess I've never felt more safe in a city (including Wellington) than I have in DC.

We strolled on to the World War II memorial. We'd managed to miss this one in previous memorial hunts, despite its size. It's plenty grand, but the memorial is somewhat overshadowed by its fountains, making the edifice feel more like a water park than a war memorial. (Must be lovely in summer, though.)

On from the memorial we wandered back to the southwest wharf to eat a lunch of Gordon Ramsay's fish and chips; the establishment that I'd been so rude about a couple of journal entries back. Sally had promised them to Angus for undertaking the long walk. They were ok, but sticking a chef's name on a chippie is a bit misleading, I reckon.

After that we walked home.

This is the end of our time in Washington. I had a pretty good time here, and while didn't see absolutely everything we could have, I think we did a decent job getting a feel for the place in eight nights. Washington is a fairly abnormal city: it's got the cultural baggage of London, Rome, or Paris but in a city with a population of only 600k. It's got better transport infrastructure than London, and more space for tourists to spread out; so it's pretty forgiving on people like me who don't like people constantly in their face.

[spacenutspod]

6 min read NASA’s GUSTO Prepares to Map Space Between the Stars  The GUSTO telescope hangs from the hangar crane during telescope pointing tests at the Long Duration Balloon Facility on the Ross Ice Shelf near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Dec. 6, 2023. Mission specialists were calibrating the star cameras, used to determine the direction of pointing of the telescope. Credit: José Silva on behalf of the GUSTO Team On a vast ice sheet in Antarctica, scientists and engineers are preparing a NASA experiment called GUSTO to explore the universe on a balloon. GUSTO will launch from the Ross Ice Shelf, near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station research base, no earlier than Dec. 21. GUSTO, which stands for Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory, will peer into the space between stars called the interstellar medium. The balloon-borne telescope will help scientists make a 3D map of a large part of the Milky Way in extremely high-frequency radio waves. Examining a 100-square-degree area, GUSTO will explore the many phases of the interstellar medium and the abundances of key chemical elements in the galaxy. By studying the LMC and comparing it to the Milky Way, we’ll be able to understand how galaxies evolve from the early universe until now. Chris Walker GUSTO principal investigator In particular, GUSTO will scan the interstellar medium for carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen because they are critical for life on Earth. These elements can also help scientists disentangle the complex web of processes that sculpt the interstellar medium.   While our galaxy brims with billions of stars, including our Sun, that are interesting in their own right, the space between them holds a wealth of clues about how stars and planets are born. The interstellar medium is where diffuse, cold gas and dust accumulate into gigantic cosmic structures called molecular clouds, which, under the right conditions, can collapse to form new stars. From the swirling disk of material around the young star, planets can form. GUSTO is unique in its ability to examine the first part of this process, “to understand how these clouds form in the first place,” Chris Walker, principal investigator of GUSTO at the University of Arizona, said. GUSTO is a collaboration between NASA, the University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON); as well as MIT, JPL, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and others. The GUSTO telescope is seen on Nov. 9, 2023, as Colombia Scientific Balloon Facility personnel assist the GUSTO team in flipping the observatory from a horizontal position to a vertical position. The photo was taken at the Long Duration Balloon Facility on the Ross Ice Shelf near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Credit: José Silva on behalf of the GUSTO Team Eventually, when massive stars die and explode as supernovae, massive shock waves ripple through molecular clouds, which can in turn lead to more stars being born, or simply destroy the clouds. GUSTO can also look at this end stage of the molecular clouds. GUSTO functions as a cosmic radio, equipped to “listen” for particular cosmic ingredients. That’s because it senses the high-frequency signals that atoms and molecules transmit. The “T” in GUSTO stands for “terahertz” – that’s about a thousand times higher than the frequencies that cellphones operate at. “We basically have this radio system that we built that we can turn the knob and tune to the frequency of those lines,” Walker said. “And if we hear something, we know it’s them. We know it’s those atoms and molecules.” As the telescope moves across the sky, scientists will use it to map the intensity and velocities of the signals from particular atoms and molecules at each position. “Then we can go back and connect the dots and create an image that looks like a photograph of what the emission looks like,” Walker said. Observations like these can’t be done for carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen from Earth-based telescopes because of the water vapor in our atmosphere absorbing the light from the atoms and molecules in question, interfering with measurements. On a balloon about 120,000 feet above the ground, GUSTO will fly above most of that water vapor. “For the type of science we do, it’s as good as being in space,” Walker said. The GUSTO telescope will also reveal the 3D structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, a dwarf galaxy near our Milky Way. The LMC resembles some of the galaxies of the early universe that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is exploring. But since the LMC is much closer than the distant early galaxies, scientists can examine it in greater detail with GUSTO. “By studying the LMC and comparing it to the Milky Way, we’ll be able to understand how galaxies evolve from the early universe until now,” Walker explained. GUSTO is expected to fly for at least 55 days on a 39 million cubic-foot zero-pressure balloon, a type of balloon that can fly high for long periods of time in the Austral Summer over Antarctica and has the diameter of a football field as it floats. GUSTO team member José Silva, Ph.D. student at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), stands next to the Long Duration Balloon Facility sign on the Ross Ice Shelf, 8 miles from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Nov. 9, 2023. Credit: Geoffrey Palo on behalf of the GUSTO Team Antarctica provides an ideal launch location for GUSTO. During the southern hemisphere’s summer, the continent gets constant sunlight, so a scientific balloon can be extra stable there. Plus, the atmospheric zone around the South Pole generates cold rotating air – creating a phenomenon called an anticyclone, which enables balloons to fly in circles without disturbance. “Missions will fly in circles around the South Pole for days or weeks at a time, which is really valuable to the science community,” said Andrew Hamilton, chief of the NASA Balloon Program Office at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. “The longer they have for observation, the more science they can get.  GUSTO is the first balloon-borne experiment in NASA’s Explorer program. It has the same scientific reach as the program’s space-borne satellites, such as TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and IXPE (Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer). “With GUSTO, we’re really trying to trailblaze,” said Kieran Hegarty, Program Manager for GUSTO at APL. “We want to show that balloon investigations do return compelling science.” A total of twelve mission team members from University of Arizona and APL are on site in Antarctica performing the final checks before GUSTO’s launch. With seals and penguins nearby, Walker and colleagues are hard at work readying this experiment for its ultimate adventure in the sky. For Walker, GUSTO represents some 30 years of effort, the outgrowth of many experiments from Earth-based telescopes and other balloon efforts. “We all feel very fortunate and privileged to do a mission like this – to have the opportunity to put together the world’s most advanced terahertz instrument ever created, and then drag it halfway around the world and then launch it,” he said. “It’s a challenge, but we feel honored and humbled to be in the position to do it.” About the Mission In March 2017, NASA Astrophysics Division selected the Explorer Mission of Opportunity GUSTO (Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory) to measure emissions from the interstellar medium to help scientists determine the life cycle of interstellar gas by surveying a large region of our Milky Way galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The GUSTO mission is led by Principal Investigator Christopher Walker from the University of Arizona in Tucson. The team also includes the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which provided the balloon platform to mount the instrumentation, known as the gondola, and the GUSTO project management. The University of Arizona provided the GUSTO telescope and the focal plane instrument, which incorporates detector technologies from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Arizona State University in Tempe, and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research. Media Contacts Elizabeth LandauHeadquarters, Washington202-358-0845elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov Alise FisherHeadquarters, Washington202-358-2546alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov Share Details Last Updated Dec 18, 2023 Related Terms Astrophysics Galaxies Goddard Space Flight Center Infrared Light Missions NASA Headquarters Origin & Evolution of the Universe Science & Research Scientific Balloons The Milky Way The Universe Wallops Flight Facility Explore More 3 min read Hubble Looks at a Late-type Galaxy Article 3 days ago 5 min read Seeing and Believing: 15 Years of Exoplanet Images Fifteen years ago, astronomers delivered what is now an iconic direct image of an exoplanet,… Article 6 days ago 3 min read NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Returns to Science Operations Article 1 week ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics Missions Humans in Space Climate Change Solar System

[hyper-coasters]

T-33 Shooting Star.

[corditeandwhiskey]

And it's currently sitting in the Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Annex just outside of Dulles Intl. Airport in Chantilly, VA. Last time I was there I heard rumblings that there's a plan to reassemble it. And after seeing their on-sight restoration hangar, I 100% believe that rumor.

10/10 would recommend this museum for any of my AvGeek friends.

Horton Ho 229V3, captured and shipped back to the States. This is the one and only time it was assembled. When captured in Germany it was incomplete, the fuselage/centre section was many miles away from the outer wing panels when discovered by US troops. The Ho 229 was the only jet powered flying wing that actually flew during the war.

The second prototype, V2, was destroyed and the pilot killed on its second powered flight. This is the third prototype and was taken to America under Operation Paperclip. It was the world's first stealth aircraft, although its stealth capabilities were only discovered after computer modelling in the 21st century

[planepieces]

Very early Sensenich Wooden Scimitar Pusher Propeller off a 1930’s Curtiss Wright Junior CW-1 Airplane, also known as the Curtiss Robertson CR-1 Skeeter. This propeller went on the 3-cylinder Szekely SR-3 radial engine. This is the only one we have come across. Taking offers 💰💰 @smithsonian #sensenich #curtissjunior #curtissrobertson #smithsonian #woodenpropeller #curtisswright #glenncurtiss #interiordesign #aviationlovers #aviationhistory #rockthesky #szekely #pusherprop #mancave #manhangar #hangar #pilotlife #rare #wallhanging #wallhangers #beachisgood #avgeeks #vintageaircraft #flyingmachine #sundayfunday #planeporn #antiques #airportinterior #interiordesigner https://www.instagram.com/p/Bng0TWCAbvk/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ba9hm9hpn9hg

[usafphantom2]

New Reality Series Stars Texas MiG Pilot

February 14, 2024 Luc Zipkin Warbirds News 0

Randy W. Ball is North America’s PREMIER Jet Demonstration Pilot. Randy has performed well over 1,500 performances to date! No other North American Jet Demo pilot even comes close to that number of performances. Photo via Fighter Jets Demo Team

Randy W. Ball is North America’s PREMIER Jet Demonstration Pilot. Randy has performed well over 1,500 performances to date! No other North American Jet Demo pilot even comes close to that number of performances. Photo via Fighter Jets Demo Team

Aircorps Art Dec 2019

PRESS RELEASE

An exciting new aviation reality series based on a Smithsonian Air & Space magazine article about a remarkable jet restored to fly at 600 miles per hour will begin streaming on Thursday, February 15, 2024, at 8 pm Eastern time. Airshow Team combines the thrill of the aerial cockpit experience with hands-on maintenance in the hangar, all performed by the talented team behind one of the world’s most famous aerobatic jets.

The first season, dubbed Airshow Team: Red 620, stars Randy Ball, a commercial captain and civilian demo pilot with a penchant for flying upside-down at high speeds; Jon Blanchette, octogenarian owner and restorer of the only flying MiG-17PF in the world, Red 620; and Erin Kelley, the only female crew chief of an aerobatic jet demo team in North America.

Randy W. Ball is North America’s PREMIER Jet Demonstration Pilot. Randy has performed well over 1,500 performances to date! No other North American Jet Demo pilot even comes close to that number of performances.

Randy is the ONLY Jet Demo pilot (military or civilian) to be granted both a day and night unlimited aerobatic rating in jet fighters by the FAA. He has flown over 44 different types of aircraft, manufactured in 9 different countries. Photo via Fighter Jets Demo Team

“Airshow Team is like Top Gun meets Top Gear,” said Lynn Rebuck, creator, producer, and director of the series based on her Smithsonian story. “Viewers get to experience the thrill of the 600-mph ride from in the cockpit and then go into the hangar to see what it takes to make the jet fly.”

While the first season primarily follows Ball, Kelley, and Blanchette, it also features performances by the USAF Thunderbirds and other military jet demo teams including the F-22 Raptor, F-16s, B-2 bomber, and B-52s, as well as top civilian airshow performers. Rebuck hopes to expand the franchise to follow other airshow teams in future seasons. But it all begins with the simple story of a man who was determined to make a rusty old jet fly.

Retired General Motors engineer Jon Blanchette did what many believed impossible: he bought a scrapped Polish fighter jet and turned it into an airshow star. Remarkably, he relied only on his retirement funds, not corporate funding, to restore it. Blanchette then tapped accomplished airshow performer Randy Ball, who boasts more time flying MiGs than any other pilot in North America, to fly the jet at airshows. Ball and his traveling mechanic, Erin Kelley, inspected and tweaked Red 620 before Ball launched into the sky for its first post-restoration flight and began flying it at airshows on the East Coast.

Impressed with the pristine restoration, Ball urged Blanchette to enter the jet into competition at AirVenture Oshkosh, the largest and most prestigious airshow in the country. Blanchette’s jet took top honors in its Warbird division and received the coveted Silver Wrench for the Best Restoration. Those achievements landed Blanchette’s jet on the cover of Smithsonian’s Air & Space magazine, thanks to Rebuck, a producer and journalist who met the team at an airshow in Pennsylvania.

“When I first spoke with Jon, his wife Bev, and Randy at the airshow, I knew this incredible story of this jet needed to be told,” said Rebuck. “But then I watched Randy fly Red 620 just 20 feet off the ground approaching the speed of sound and realized that it needed to be seen.” So Rebuck began filming airshow performances, interviews with the team, and documenting the team’s jet maintenance routines and repairs. The series, as Ball says, shows “all the stuff that goes on at airshows that you just never see.”

Ezoic

In one episode, viewers will get to see pilot Randy Ball and his team of volunteers put the tail back onto a MiG-17 fighter jet. Another shows Erin Kelley reconfiguring the oxygen system.

“A jet demo pilot rarely works on his planes,” said Rebuck, “and even more rare that a female mechanic is shown performing jet repairs in a streaming series.”

The Texas cast of Airshow Team: Red 620: (l to r) Mechanic/crew chief Erin Kelley, airshow demo pilot Randy Ball, and volunteer mechanics Sam Swink and John Carmical pose with Ball’s MiG17F at the Tyler Pounds Regional Airport in Tyler, Texas. Photo credit: Lynn Rebuck/LITitz Media Group

Airline staffing shortages have disrupted travel worldwide in recent years, arising from shortages of maintenance technicians, ground crew, and pilots. Multiple industry sources anticipate that the worldwide aviation industry will require at least an additional 500,000 technicians to maintain aircraft in the coming few years, and about 300,000 new pilots to fly them. Rebuck opted to stream Airshow Team for free to encourage a broader audience to pursue careers in aviation.

Airshow Team: Red 620 will stream for free online at www.AirshowTeam.TV. The family-friendly series will premiere globally with the first two episodes of its season on Thursday, February 15, followed by one new episode every Thursday for the next 10 weeks. Airshow Team is produced by LITitz Media Group, an award-winning, woman-owned digital media content creation company.

@VintageAircraftNews via X