Boss! Boss! Ze planes!

Etrich Taube

Annette and I went up to Nelson for a couple of days holiday recently (it was great) and on the way back, we dropped in to the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre a few kilometres outside of Blenheim.

I only heard about it a short time ago; I had no idea we had anything like this in New Zealand. It's just jam-packed with a galore of fantastic WW1 aviation dioramas as well as display cases showing related artifacts like some of von Richtofen's trophy cups, one of Rene Fonck's uniforms, and stuff like that.

I took a lot of photos, though not nearly as many as I would have liked, and unfortunately I didn't have my tripod with me so I couldn't get as many long-exposure detail close-ups as I wanted.

I include here a scan of the exhibition brochure, which shows a plan of the hall with the locations of the various exhibits. Click on the image below to see a larger version in which it's actually possible to make out what's what.

Exhibition layout pamphlet

I can't recommend this place too highly for anyone with even the slightest interest in WW1 aviation. It's fantastic.

Note: unfortunately Annette counts as someone with the slightest interest in WW1 aviation; she loyally went once around the displays with me and then went out for a coffee and sandwich. I would have stayed much, much longer, but I suspect she might have started to get a bit bored sitting in the cafeteria after the first couple of hours.