Deutsches Museum Flugwert Schleissheim

"It's next to an old castle and a small airfield that used to be a glider training center in the 1930's (when the German Luftwaffe was forbidden from training pilots by the Versailles Treaty, they formed soaring clubs and trained thousands of glider pilots who later became fighter pilots). I was there in 1996 on a weekend between business in Germany and France. It's quite a nice museum, though the very shadowy lighting was not so great for photos!

Schleissheim is not far from central Munich (it's near an S-bahn commuter train station). It's part of the fabulous Deutsches Museum of Technology, whose main building is in the city. I'm glad they found more spacious quarters for the aircraft. This museum (both the main building and the aircraft center) is well worth a visit if you are ever in Munich.

They have some early aircraft, including one of Otto Lilienthal's pioneering hang-gliders from the late 1800's (he inspired the Wright Brothers). There are some WW1-era aircraft (none shown here). The discomfort with the Nazi era is clear -- the WW2-era aircraft are German designs produced in other countries under other designations (He-111 bomber shown, produced in Spain), with no Nazi markings (these are forbidden in Germany except under special historical circumstances). I think there was a similar unmarked Me-109 fighter. I was pleased if surprised to see one of my favorite trainers, the Stearman, in blue and gold USAF colors! Post-war German markings are OK, and there are also former East German aircraft, including MiG-21 and MiG-23.

As the OpticsDude, I naturally had to photograph the MiG-23 HUD optics (I met the guy who designed this HUD -- I was teaching him our design software -- he was then at Zeiss Jena in East Germany, where most of the precision optics for the former Eastern Bloc were designed and built).