A man with no legs flew out of Duxford, shot down a German aircraft. I’m not sure Sir Douglas was a nice man but he was certainly iconic.

Fancying a day out I nipped down to his old haunting grounds today. Nice airfield, berms and shelters still in place 80 years later, various buildings looking very RAF.

Curiously there didn’t seem to be a war memorial for the RAF pilots. Just (a nice) one for the Americans and one for the army.

The hangars at Duxford now have some fantastic exhibits. I didn’t see a Hurricane but they had plenty of Spitfires and a vast collection of other single seaters from World War 2, plus dozens of other aircraft.

The highlights for me weren’t the British aircraft, the Challenger tank, the two Victoria Crosses (awarded for actions at Arnhem, so I’ve now seen those two on two different occasions, in two different countries).

Duxford hosts a foreign museum, a custom designed building with a suspended concrete roof.

Inside are a B52 bomber, a Flying Fortress, various aircraft called F[number]; F4 Phantom, F111E, F100 and F15-A. There’s also an ugly aeroplane, square and squalid, and one of the finest designs known to aerial warfare: The A-10 Thunderbolt. First one I’ve seen and it’s magnificent.

It wasn’t even the top highlight though. Today I didn’t just see the best aircraft ever conceived, designed, built, flown; I got to touch it: The SR-71A.

So a good day, well worth the horrific drive through the rain to get there, the three and a half miles walked around the airfield.

Too expensive, too far away, not well laid out, exhibits not very well marked; this isn’t a good museum, except for the exhibits. They’re awesome. And I got to touch a Blackbird.