I would strongly recommend that anybody with an interest in aviation history visit this museum.

That said, there are one or 2 things about the museum that are really annoying.

The first is the multiple personality disorder of the signage. Some aircraft will have extensive signage next to the display, and some will have almost nothing.

Second, although some of the aircraft like the Canberra and Lancaster are clearly "the real deal" (more or less, although the Lancaster is dressed up to look like a different Lancaster, and there is no information about the one that we can see), most of the ones that are replicas are not clearly marked as such.

This is a particular example. The sign hanging under the undercarriage is "Blériot monoplane, circa 1909". Is it a replica? Probably. There aren't a lot of original early 20th-century planes still around although there are in fact two Blériots (of this type) that I know of that not only exist, but are still in flying condition. (Although obviously that isn't done very often.) Also, Louis Blériot (1 July 1872 to 1 August 1936, France) did not produce just a single plane, or even a single monoplane.

From the date of 1909 and the shape of the tail plane, I suspect that this is a Blériot XI model, probably the most famous of the type. "Why?", I hear you ask, "I've never heard of it." That's because at this point I doubt that many of my viewers were alive 115 years ago. (I'm writing this description in 2024, 11 years after the shot was taken.) Also priorities and perceptions have changed.

Back in 1909 Britain and France were great powers, and the English Channel was one of the key waterways in the world since there was no Channel Tunnel and naturally no air service between Britain and the Continent. Now... it's just a stretch of water between two middle ranked powers, and few people (who don't live on its coast or sail it) give it much of a thought. But back then, it mattered. A lot. A British newspaper (the Daily Mail) offered a £500 to anyone who flew a powered aircraft across the Channel in 1908. Nobody came close, so in 1909 they upped the prize to £1,000.

Louis Blériot made that flight (in a Blériot XI, naturally) on 25 July, cementing the fame of the Blériot XI in the same way as the Mercury 7 astronauts would cement their fame half a century later... which is to say, "transiently". (Everyone could recite the names of the Mercury 7 then. Try to find anyone other than a space aficionado under the age of 40 who can name even two of them now.) That also applies to Blériot himself, I suspect.

Aside: How much input Blériot had in the design of the planes by this time isn't clear. Yes, he was the real deal as an engineer; he developed the first viable car headlights, from which he made money to pursue his aviation dreams. However by the time the Blériot XI came out, most of the development was done by his collaborator Raymond Saulnier.

The problem was that although the Blériot XI sold in decent numbers for the era (103 were built), the partially covered, ash wood box girder frame with its use of wing warping as a control mechanism was a developmental dead end. This was especially so in a mere 5 years, when World War I would kick development up several gears. An aircraft with a maximum speed of 75.6km/hr (40.8 knots) and a service ceiling of 3,300 feet (1km) just couldn't survive in battle conditions where, by 1916, the Sopwith Camel could do 182 km/h and climb to 19,000 feet.

Historically, though, it (and its creator) mattered in terms of getting us, eventually, to where we are today. That is, a world where Qantas can jam you into Cattle Class like sardines, and get you to the other side of the world in 24 hours... well, yeah, maybe 48 if we skip some maintenance... and they can serve you dining options that look like dog vomit, and where you can accumulate hundreds of thousands of Frequent Flyer points that are worthless. None of that would have been possible without men like Louis Blériot and his creations like this one.

Oh, and you know how I kept emphasising that the prize was for the first powered flight? Yeah. The first flight across the Channel was done in a hot air balloon... in 1785.

Addendum: My personal opinion is that Facebook is a sociopathic organisation that steals other peoples' intellectual property (including the images in this gallery) despite being explicitly denied permission to do so.