What's On at RAF Museum London

Trailblazers

5 May - 31 January

Many people identify the Golden Age of aviation as the period between the two World Wars, a time when young men and women sought thrills, danger and, ultimately, international recognition through trailblazing aviation exploits that set the world alight.

This small group of pioneers were the first to conquer oceans and seas or just the physical and mental demands of long distance flying without the comfort of the modern technologies that we take for granted today, making their achievements, for many, even more wondrous.

Last Summer the Royal Air Force Museum decided to honour this band of intrepid aviators with a free six month exhibition - ‘Trailblazers’. Such was its popularity that the Museum has introduced yet again the same four individuals whose courage, grit and determination captured the world’s imagination during this golden era of flight.

• Men such as Alex Henshaw, Spitfire Test Pilot and British Air Racer who flew in 1939 from London to Cape Town covering all 6,377 miles in just over 39 hours, a few short months before the outbreak of World War II.

• Amy Johnson who, in 1930, became the first woman successfully to complete a long distance solo flight to Australia – in a second-hand De Havilland Gipsy Moth.

• Francis Chichester, a superb navigator who, in 1931, was the first to make a solo east-west crossing of the Tasman Sea in his Gipsy Moth.

• Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to cross the Atlantic single-handed in 1927, with just a compass and the stars to navigate his way.

During Summer 2009 ‘Trailblazers’ will focus the spot-light on these pioneers, their achievements and the aircraft associated with them in the Museum's appropriately named Milestones of Flight Hall...and as the summer progresses we will be adding more heroes and heroines of flight to this temporary "Hall of Fame"

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