Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace
Established1919
LocationParis – Le Bourget Airport
Le Bourget, France
Coordinates48°56′50″N 2°26′6″E / 48.94722°N 2.43500°E / 48.94722; 2.43500
TypeAviation museum
Websitewww.museeairespace.fr

The Musée de l'air et de l'espace (English: Air and Space Museum), is a French aerospace museum, located at the south-eastern edge of Paris–Le Bourget Airport, north of Paris, and in the commune of Le Bourget.[1] It was inaugurated in 1919 after a proposal by the celebrated aeronautics engineer Albert Caquot (1881–1976).

Description

Occupying over 150,000 square metres (1,600,000 sq ft) of land and hangars, it is one of the oldest aviation museums in the world. The museum's collection contains more than 19,595 items, including 150 aircraft, and material from as far back as the 16th Century. Also displayed are more modern air and spacecraft, including the prototype for Concorde, and Swiss and Soviet rockets. The museum also has the only known remaining piece — the jettisoned main landing gear — of L'Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird), the 1927 aircraft which attempted to make the first Transatlantic crossing from Paris to New York. On May 8, 1927, Charles Nungesser and François Coli aboard L'Oiseau blanc, a 450-hp Lorraine-powered Levasseur biplane [2] took off from Le Bourget. The aircraft jettisoned its main landing gear (which is stored at the museum), which it was designed to do as part of its trans-Atlantic flight profile, but then disappeared over the Atlantic, only two weeks before Lindbergh's monoplane completed its successful solo non-stop trans-Atlantic flight to Le Bourget from the United States.

Other items of interest range include:

Aircraft on display

Between the Wars and Light Aviation Hall

Cierva C.8 Autogiro
Caudron Simoun
A380, MSN F-WWDD.[3]

World War II Hall

Roundel Hall

Prototype Hall

SO.6000 Triton n°3.

Concorde Hall

Tarmac/Exterior Exhibit

See also

References

  1. "Press Kit 100 years of the International Aerospace Show Paris Le Bourget 15 to 21 June 2009." (Archive) French Aerospace Museum. p. 3 Retrieved on 24 April 2010.
  2. "Air and Space Museum Paris". Archived from the original on 30 August 2018. Retrieved 30 August 2018.
  3. "Airbus A380 MSN4 F-WWDD". museeairespace (in French). Archived from the original on 1 July 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  4. Chris Hatherill (9 March 2016). "When Astronomers Chased a Total Eclipse in a Concorde". Motherboard. Vice.
  5. Aerofossile2012 (28 May 2009), Dassault Mirage 4, retrieved 13 July 2021{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. "The Development and History of the Mirage IVA". Royal Aeronautical Society. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  7. "Opération Tamouré (1)". aviateurs.e-monsite.com (in French). Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  8. "Airbus Helicopters X3 makes its new home at France's national Air and Space museum" Airbus PR, 19 June 2014. Accessed: 19 June 2014. Archive

48°56′50″N 2°26′06″E / 48.9471°N 2.4349°E / 48.9471; 2.4349

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